Alfred Hitchcock

"The Master of Suspense" many have called him. Albert Hitchcock manages to captivate and move audiences everywhere with his films, pulling them in with his creative style. From watching three of his films in class I've noticed a couple patterns of his individual style as a director.

The first theme I've noticed that he managed to maintain throughout all three films was the consistency of the first person view. He was able to make the audience feel as though they were in the shoes of the main character. This stuck out most to me in Rear Window. We are literally put in the position of L. B. Jefferies (played by James Stewart), looking out quite nosily through his neighbors windows and straight into their private lives while being confined to a single room.

Another theme I've noticed was during The Thirty-nine Steps, we had the pleasure of following around Richard Hannay (played by Robert Donat) and his very close encounters with his pursuers. Hitchcock is found of putting his heroes into situations where they are wrongly accused of some sort of crime. Richard Hannay is the last person to be around a woman the night of her death and is wanted not only by the law but a group of spies trying to keep the secrets that were supposed to lie rest with the woman's death.

The last theme I've noticed is how Hitchcock has made films based around searching for the truth, making stories thickly whipped with mystery. A great example would be with Vertigo, where our main man John "Scottie" Ferguson (played by James Stewart) was supposed to be investigating the odd behavior of his friends wife, when suddenly he is whisked into a deep mystery shrouded by a mysteriously timed death.