Hitchcock Statistics: Happy Birthday Sir Alfred Hitchcock

In honour of my favourite (and the most flawless) director there ever was, Alfred Hitchcock's, birthday, I found some interesting statistical Alfred Hitchcock information posters. 

Happy birthday Hitch, my life would most definitely not be the same without you.

Dial M For Murder - Review

There are some Hitchcock films that are often ignored by a lot of people in favour of focusing attention on his bigger budget, box office record smashing films, Dial M for Murder is one of these forgotten gems. Set mainly in one single room, the film sees Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) enlist the help of an old college friend, Captain Lesgate (Anthony Dawson), to murder his wife, Margot (Grace Kelly). When the murder doesn't go quite to plan, and Margot ends up killing Lesgate, Wendice must think fast in order to cover his tracks, and what we get is a cat and mouse chase in a typically suspenseful Hitchcock style feature.

The biggest topic for discussion regarding this film is the extremely thick plot, which was adapted from the play by Frederick Knott. The many twists and turns of the plot are presented to us throughout the whole 1 hour and 45 minutes of screen time that the film runs for, showing Hitchcock's understanding of pacing and how not to overwhelm and audience with information. The plot twists are very often unseen, and the characters, specifically the Inspector, (John Williams) have more knowledge on the events of the night of the murder than the viewer, even though we were the ones that witnessed the deed happening. The murder is meticulously planned out in the film by Wendice, in order to inform Lesgate, and the audience, of the way in which the events should pan out, meaning that when, on the night of the attack, things don't really go to plan, we are already full of suspense over what position Wendice will find himself in and how he will deal with it.

With the remorselessness of Wendice sending shivers down viewer's spines, Ray Milland's performance was brilliant as the sadistic brain behind the murder. Grace Kelly, although being a minor character in terms of how often we see her, shows her perfect fit to the role of the Hitchcock blonde in this film. Her innocence is captured through her lack of awareness of her husband's manipulative side, the audience is immediately sympathetic towards her, even though she is in fact flawed, cheating on her husband with Halliday, however we discover that in Hitchcock's world, there is rarely an unflawed character and therefore should not show contempt for people's flaws, it is only when people's evil is shown that we should express out contempt. The casting for this feature was great, with the actors giving just enough performance so the realism and excitement of the investigation is relatable and not viewed as too much.

Dial M for Murder is definitely not one of Hitchcock's films to skip. Whatever simplicity Hitchcock chose to go with in regards to the technical side of the film and the cinematography is overrun by the winding plot and diverse range of characters, where we are genuinely at a loss as to where the film will go next. A masterpiece of '50s cinema, this film is an example of Hitchcock at his best and most comfortable.

The Film Tag

There is no witty or original name for this tag, I'm afraid. I think the idea of tags are really fun, and after searching for many film-related ones and coming to no real success, I decided to make my own. Feel free to post your own answers even if I haven't tagged you!

If you could choose one (dead or alive) director & two (dead or alive) actors/actresses to collaborate on a film project who would they be? 

→ Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock. There could be no other answer to this question, he is the absolute master of cinema in my eyes, delivering amazingly engaging films from his first in the late 1920s to his last in the late 1970s. I would want him to be in the mindset he was in during the 1950s, however, where most of my favourite Hitchcock films were produced and I feel that creatively he was at his best.
Cillian Murphy would work brilliantly with Hitchcock's style, his acting ability constantly surprises me and I love his work. I would also love to see Jessica Chastain in the leading female role, showing her versatility in her constant changes of characters from The Tree of Life to Zero Dark Thirty, she would fully deserve a role in this production.

A film from your favourite director that you think is underrated.

→ Since Hitchcock directed around 53 feature films in his career span, there are so many gems that get out-shined by the handful of films he made that are projected to a legendary status. While the likes of Psycho and The Birds are brilliant in their own right, smaller films such as Family Plot are often disregarded as mediocre films, when the truth of the matter is Family Plot is a hilarious final film from Hitchcock. The comedy is brilliant, the suspense is mastered and the film boasts one of my favourite scripts to come from Camp Hitchcock. With the film being very, very '70s, the style would be one that people, without knowing, would never think of as being a Hitchcock film, yet is as enjoyable as one of his most recognisable.

Your favourite adaptation of a book on screen. 

→ I am absolutely in love with Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet, with the film being one of my most watched. There is always issues and arguments whenever a director chooses to adapt any of Shakespeare's works, however  I think that Luhrmann is a truly visionary director, and the combination of his love for challenging the canon, incorporating music so effortlessly into his films and his unique style makes his films extremely enoyable.

The last film you watched & the next film you plan on watching.

→ The last film I watched was Coraline, yesterday, and the next film I plan on watching is Annie Hall, this afternoon.

Do you own any interesting film memorabilia? Stories behind them?

→ 'Interesting' is subjective, however in my bedroom at my childhood home I have posters of Pulp Fiction and Taxi Driver, two of my favourite films growing up. In my room in London I have a picture of Alfred Hitchcock, and in my attic somewhere I have a huge, and I mean HUGE, poster that I got when I went to the Oz the Great and Powerful premiere a few months back. It's really big.

Favourite past (dead), present (living) and future (upcoming) directors.

→ Past: Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick.
Present: David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Baz Luhrmann, Nicolas Winding Refn.
Upcoming: Adam Leon, Jonathon Levine.

Someone you would like to see a film made about. Who would direct it? Who would star in it?

→ I'm extremely interested in the Royal Family, so I feel like films about them are always fun to watch. I would love to watch a film portraying a fictional dramatisation of the rumours surrounding Prince Charles having an affair with Camilla. I'm not sure that would be allowed, but I think it would be an interesting film. The reason I mention it being a fictional dramatisation is that I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to claim it was based on a real life story. I think Spielberg would be a solid choice to direct the film, with him showing he can make heavy dialogue in films interesting and moving, which I feel that a film of this type would need. Another good choice to direct the film would be Tom Hooper.

So that is the end of the questions on this tag, I enjoyed thinking about the questions and writing my answers, and if you think you will, too, don't hesitate to copy the questions and answer them yourself.

Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt

A young woman from a small-town family in Santa Rosa is ecstatic at the news that her Uncle Charlie is coming to stay with them for a while. Everything goes swimmingly until a pair of detectives come over posing as government workers taking a survey and the suggestion that her uncle is an infamous serial killer is placed upon young Charlie. Relationships are tested and secrets are revealed in this brilliant piece of cinema from Alfred Hitchcock.

In Shadow of a Doubt, we can see that Hitchcock was beginning to discover his love for the trope of the 'wrong man'. Hitch showed extremely early on in his career that he had an interest in the scenario of a man being wrongly accused of his crime with The Lodger (1927), however what we get with Shadow of a Doubt, which was produced 16 years later, is a film so much more engaging and an example of the amount of progress that Hitchcock had made due to the experience of directing 27 feature films in that time period. The 'wrong man' trope is used off-screen in this film, which is interesting as Hitchcock has mirrored the characters in focus in his films such as The 39 Steps, where we follow a man who is wrongly accused, in Shadow of a Doubt, we follow the right man who is being pursued for the murder just as the wrong man is, somewhere else in the off-screen world of the diegesis.

Experimentation can be seen in all of Hitchcock's work and the key features of Shadow of a Doubt include canted shots, suggesting the character in frame to have an unstable mindset as he is pacing up and down the room, along with causing a feeling of uneasiness in the audience. This is where Hitchcock's brilliance lies, he knows how to experiment with film without screaming it in his audience's faces and therefore taking away from the meaning behind the experimentation. His innovational use of the camera in presenting a certain mood are used infrequently and it is there that the magic lies.
We can see that Hitchcock really grasped the knowledge that music is the perfect form of art to collaborate with film in order to create certain moods in this feature. With blaring orchestral music playing during the build-up of, and throughout, the dramatic moments of the film, we associate this music with danger in our subconscious, so when it is played quietly during the less dramatic moments of the film, we are still clinging on to our seats in fear that something is going to happen. Hitchcock would go on in his career to realise that music can make or break a film, with the screeching string soundtrack of his 1960 masterpiece, Psycho, being embedded into any viewers ears for a long time after leaving the cinema or turning the television off.

There is a certain brilliance to Alfred Hitchcock's films which one rarely finds in thrillers anymore. Hitch's understanding of the ins and outs of cinema, due to his involvement since the beginning of the mass production of films, is something that has been attempted to be replicated by other director's but has not ever been as brilliant, think Psycho II, Psycho III, or even the Gus van Sant remake of Psycho. Watching a Hitchcock film is truly a delight, even in the modern day, where technology can simulate tigers out of absolutely nothing and destroy the city of New York in post-production, there is nothing, for me, like sitting back and watching a director master the art with as much ease as it appears Hitchcock did.

Hitchcock's 'The Skin Game' Review

Without being told beforehand, I don't think anybody would guess that The Skin Game was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film, released in 1931, tells the fairly monotonous story of the war between two families, one being traditional and the other being a modern threat to their way of living. The film and its characters are well-rounded, and there are moments of tension and excitement, however the film in itself seems to present the story at a steady pace, with the ending feeling out of place and abrupt.
Plot points aside, I think the film shows great progress in the career of Hitchcock, who had directed his first feature less than a decade before. With experimentation in camerawork and editing, Hitchcock definitely shows in his direction of this film that he was out to push the boundaries of cinema and create what had not been created before, it just seems that this film was not quite the film that was going to prove that to the public.

One of the biggest forms of experimentation in this film comes from the editing and camera work. With whip pans being used in the exciting auction scene in order to reflect the sudden changes in the bidding war, Hitchcock shows that he was a master of controlling the emotions that a camera could make an audience feel. This fast paced scene, featuring a skilled hand in camera work, was definitely one of the ones that I found most enjoyable. In the same scene, a little before the auctioning has started, Hitchcock shows his editing skills, with the superimposition of a face hauntingly moving towards the camera numerous times, showing the audience how fearful of this man the young girl is.

In context of the time and the extent that cinema had been pushed before, this film stands its ground with other films released at the time. The film has excitement, plotting, deception and death, some of these themes Hitchcock went on to master in his later career, and as expected, these scenes are the ones that stand out in this film. Hitchcock himself has said that he did not make this film by choice, an adaptation of an averagely written stage play, the film is character based and slightly mundane at parts, something that Hitch's later films were rarely ever called. It appears to me, that in the time of advancement from silent films to talkies, Hitchcock wanted to perfect the art of the talkie before he made his big break-through with it. It seems that this film, along with a few others (that will remain unnamed in this post) were merely a practice for Hitchcock to see what worked and what didn't, and what didn't quite work in this film was the sound.

Considering the first feature 'talkie' film was released only four years before The Skin Game, we have to respect that the technology was not brilliant at the time of the film's production. The fact that Hitch manages to seamlessly construct both the sound and picture of the film gives him a lot of respect in my eyes, however there are parts of the film where the audio is not perfect, perhaps some actor's voices were not suited to this new advancement of technology, as there are some character's whose lines are barely audible, and some whose are perfectly clear. The fact of the matter is, the story is told, and Hitchcock, having managed to master silent films in his short space of working in the industry before talkies were introduced, uses a lot of the features common in silents to tell the story, such as the vision of the factories superimposed over the cottage.

The film is not one to watch if you are looking for the most exciting of Hitchcock's work, however it is a really beautiful watch when one enjoys looking at a director's advancement and learning process. The film is just over an hour long, not long enough to become dragged-out and to lose a modern audiences attention span, and the strength of the play that the film is based of has enough intrigue and twists to keep you hanging on for the whole hour.

REVIEW: ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S 'TO CATCH A THIEF'

Opening with a shot of a travel agents window advertising France as a tourist destination, Hitchcock's 1955 'To Catch a Thief' could very well be mistaken for a advertisement funded by the French tourist board. That is, however, until a sudden cut to a panic-stricken woman screaming takes over the screen and we are violently thrust back into the world of Alfred Hitchcock, where the pleasant parts of life are overlooked in favour of the sinister.

We see the character of John Robie, played brilliantly by Cary Grant, living a reformed life of peace in the south of France after living the life of a well-known jewel thief, however in the typical Hitchcock trope of 'the wrong man', he is accused of being responsible for a new set of jewel robberies in France and is pursued by the police. The film follows Robie's attempts to catch the real jewel thief and clear his name of the crimes he has not permitted.

The first thing to comment on about this film is the absolutely stunning cinematography  The
picturesque backdrop of the south of France combined with the beautiful camerawork makes for one of Hitchcock's most aesthetically pleasing films. Robert Burks, the cinematographer for this feature, worked on many other Hitchcock films such as North by Northwest and Vertigo, however he seemed to have peaked before either of these two films with the beautiful camerawork featured in To Catch a Thief.

The plot is good, not the best of Hitchcock's, but the performances from Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are as brilliant as ever. The suspense and intrigue caused from the two actors is really quite something, with Kelly looking fantastic and desirable as the infamous 'Hitchcock Blonde' and Grant playing the role of a man wrongly convicted nicely. It seems that Grant's performance in this film was perhaps his warm-up role to the peak-performance of his career, North by Northwest which was produced four years later.

The directing is as good as any other Hitchcock film, with the film being released in the '50s, it is clear that Alfred Hitchcock was in the prime of his career, becoming an auteur and finding both his strengths and weaknesses as a director. The film is definitely worth watching, if it's just for the cinematography itself, however, like all Hitchcock films, the audience is taken on a journey of suspense, with pauses for comedy and a subplot of a love interest with complications, the film boasts perhaps one of Hitchcock's most well-rounded features.

THE TOP FIVE LESSER-KNOWN FILMS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK:

I am a self-proclaimed Hitchcock fanatic. My early to mid teenage life was spent reading, watching and learning of Alfred Hitchcock and his works, and I think it is important, for film students such as myself especially, that people are comfortable with his works and can spot his outstanding films from his good films from his not-so-great films.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock made 52 films in his lifetime, an astonishing amount that can leave people lost when wondering which of his films to start with. A lot of people will start with Hitch's later works, taking the appeal of colour and a more advanced finished piece, however, this is not the correct way to go about looking at Hitchcock's work in terms of standard, with it often being the older films that feature the most interesting plots and experimental cinematography.

Here is a list of five Hitchcock films I think you should see in order to witness the man's brilliance in full (This is besides the obvious, most famous of his films such as Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo, which are all awesome and I highly recommend checking them out, too).

5. ROPE (1948).

Rope is a film regarding the overindulgence of the privileged. When a high member of society whom the two main characters of this film look up to suggests that murder should perhaps be legal, the two boys take the comment as an instruction, killing their classmate and deciding to host a party for the occasion. With the dead body in a trunk in the middle of the room.
The plot sets the audience up with tension from the beginning. With constant scenes of interest taking place with the trunk in shot, Hitchcock uses the mise-en-scene of this party atmosphere and gives the audience more information than the majority of characters in the film have. A Hitchcock classic that shows his title of 'Master of Suspense' to be true.

4. FAMILY PLOT (1976).

Family Plot is a comedy thriller filmed in the '70s that proves Hitchcock can break his well-known suspense thriller genre and make a suspense comedy. A con artist couple end up unsuspectingly tracking down a pair of serial kidnappers and in typical '70s style the film is hilarious throughout.
It seems that Hitchcock wanted to prove a point before he passed away. This was his last ever film and it comes across that he saw himself as more than just that guy who directed a few good suspense films throughout the 20th century. This film shows the true brilliance of Hitchcock, through storyline, casting and camera work, we get a true feeling of how much Hitchcock developed as a director throughout his career.

3. THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1927).

We are going from Hitchcock's last ever film, Family Plot, to Hitchcock's first ever film, The Pleasure Garden, which proves the point that time and technology is meaningless when looking for hidden gems in directors filmographies.
The Pleasure Garden tells the story of two young girls. Both are virtuous and sweet at the beginning, however a transformation occurs in both of the girls lives once one finds fame and fortune. A story with a similar theme to Rope, how excess can lead to peoples downfall.
The film shows numerous breathtaking works of cinematography and editing, with a superimposed ghost appearing towards the end. The film shows groundbreaking work in cinema and is truly a must watch when trying to appreciate Hitchcock's works. Try and compare this film to Family Plot in every way possible, the development of the director is as apparent as ever and these two films combined show the true brilliance of both the man and his films.

2. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951).

Telling the story of two strangers who meet on a train (really? who would have thought?). These two people from entirely different worlds make a deal to each commit a murder for the other person, that way there is no tie to the murderer and the crime they commit. Nothing could go wrong. Right?
This film is an extremely enjoyable watch, with performances by all actors being outstanding. Some of the scenes in this film genuinely still creep me out and the climax in the fun fair is one of my favourites of all Hitchcock films.
The amount of love I have for this film is hard to explain, and perhaps that is one of the reasons why it is so special, that it exceeds my words and has left me speechless at its brilliance.

1. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959).

I was not sure whether to put this film on here, as it is supposed to be a list of films that aren't well heard of by Hitchcock and I suppose you could say that a lot of people are aware of this piece of work, however in my opinion it is majorly underrated and deserves a lot more attention than it gets.
This is my all time favourite Hitchcock film, the story of a man who gets accused of being a spy and then gets chased cross-country after a group of people trying to kill him. The film is iconic in many different ways, think of the crop-duster near-death scene, the mesmerising ending taking place on Mt. Rushmore and the endless plot twists that keep the audience on the edge of their seat throughout the whole film.
Cary Grant is superb in this film, playing the role of Roger Thornhill amazingly, and Hitchcock shows his wide range of ability with numerous camera techniques (drunk driving, anyone?) and amazing choice of script. The comedy is just enough and all around this film tops not only my list of lesser-known Hitchcock films, it takes the title as my all-time favourite Hitchcock film.

FANTASY AND DESIRE IN HITCHCOCK'S 'RICH & STRANGE':

Following an age-old tradition of mine, falling ill over the transitioning new year, while the rest of London partied and celebrated the arrival of 2013, I was tucked up in bed with a huge mug of tea & my notebook, watching and writing about Alfred Hitchcock's 1931 film 'Rich and Strange' (IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes). This dark comedy pre-dates almost all of Hitch's most celebrated and appreciated films and although he had not yet fallen into what would become his unofficial title, the master of suspense, he stays true to his roots of playing with the audiences emotions (see: the cuts from the shots of Fred & Emily on the deck of the boat to the shot of the ocean rising above the porthole of their cabin). While watching this film, the ever-present themes of fantasy and desire were constantly being portrayed and a question in my head appeared, as it always does, what is Hitchcock trying to say?


The Shakespearian references in the opening titles & in a title screen of the film are one of the things that first trigger questions in the audiences mind. The actors are referred to as 'players' in the opening credits, a term from the 16th century that was used to describe actors who travelled in packs to perform shows. Theatre in 16th century England was an escape from the ever-changing monarchy which caused religious uproar and a general bad time for the country. The fact that Hitchcock added this small

change to the usually orthodox title credits suggests that he wanted to make a point that the actors, and subsequently their characters, desire some sort of escapism. (see also: the scene in the midst of the travelling montage where Fred & Emily visit a theatre- possibly offering a literal and physical interpretation of the opening title 'players' reference, and suggesting the actors in the film and the performers in the theatre are similar. Subsequently, the bearded man who pinches Emily's behind could be seen as a reminder of reality, that they are living a dream and will someday have to return to reality, however instead of dealing with the problem, Emily suggests leaving, showing once again, a running away from reality)

The other Shakespearian feature of the film is the direct quote from The Tempest, and, although it is one of the few Shakespeare plays I have not read/seen/heard the plot of, the quote itself seemingly sets us up for the story to come and also strengthens the point that deliberately, Hitchcock wanted to show the escapism and change that is desired by many average people. 

The cruise ship is the vehicle of transportation taking Emily and Fred away to their fantasy-world, almost presenting itself as somewhere in-between fantasy and reality. Both of the affairs start on the boat, with the railings of the ship visible in both, almost keeping them penned in to this fantasy world. The Arabian land in which the ship docks at shortly after Fred meets his 'Princess' is presented to us without a title card, which is interesting in the fact that the majority of the other lands are titled. The town they visit, and the people we see working there, present an almost contrast to London at the start of the film where Fred was working. His uncomfortable and undesirable commute on the underground and his strict, mundane job are both paralleled with a contrast of people of the 'fantasy' land walking around freely in the sunshine, and casually making sales in small stalls. The contrasts between the two places continue, with the weather and colour both also adding to the effect of a desired place in the latter.

A dark, rainy London factory is replaced by...

A bright, sunny, Mediterranean paradise. 

The boat provides a location for the first kisses of both of the affairs, and with features of a ship being prominent in both of the shots, such as portholes and railings, we can take that Hitchcock is portraying that the cinematic space is key in the romances. It is almost as if the boat, (as previously mentioned, the vehicle that is taking F & E towards their fantasy world), is almost involved in the relationships. The question is being presented to us that if normality continued and F & E remained in their mundane life, would they feel the distance between them that they felt on the ship? Do our routine and busy lives distract us from what we truly want in life? 

We can expand on this by looking at the metaphor in which F gives of his fantasy 'princess' and E. F compares his 'princess' to "champagne", while referring to E as "water", an interesting description which can tell us more than appears of the film. Water is a needed for our survival, whereas champagne is simply a luxury, one that not everyone can have but is nice when drunk. The effects of too much champagne can lead to sickness, a negativity, while water is sustainable and in any amount is a positive. The effects the two women have on F is similar to the two drinks described and therefore, we see that Hitchcock is saying that reality, in the metaphor, the water, is what is needed in order to live properly.

Continuing on from the champagne description of the 'princess', we can look at the portrayal of fantasy as a negative thing. Is Hitch telling us that there are limits to what is acceptable to fantasise about. Surely the 'princess', who we later find out to be nothing but a con artist, is representing the negatives of fantasising, and the lack of limitations in fantasy worlds is being shown to be a factor that can lead to bad things. 

The ship sinking at the end of the film is representing the end of the fantasy. Aside from the sinking of the vehicle transporting them to their fantasy, the fact that the camera and F & E never leave their cabin shows their lack of ability to access the fantasy world anymore. What once held their 'perfect' affairs is now literally crashing down around them signalling the devastation it has caused. 

The film ends with a Chinese ship coming and helping a distressed F & E, and their desire at the start of the film, to escape reality, is now turned on its head, with their only desire being to get safely back to normality. This flip on the recurring themes of the film presents us with a closed ending, which Hitchcock later took on board with his most famous films, giving the audience the desired closure in which they have been craving through the nail-biting suspense for the whole time.