Nowadays, many viewers have blurred the name Hitchcock, but half a century ago, he was recognized as a master of cinema, and some even commented that "he is the movie". In the IMBD TOP250 film ranking, his work is the most shortlisted, which has undoubtedly become the best defense of Hitchcock's status as a master.
Silent Film Era
The story of Hitchcock and the film begins in the silent film era. In 1920, Hitchcock entered the film industry by becoming a subtitle designer for a studio. After several promotions, he began to shoot silent films.
In 1924, he was given the opportunity to go to Germany to shoot the co-production "The Fall of Pruitt", and became acquainted with the German film master F. W. Maunau. Influenced by Maunaux, Hitchcock received attention after returning home to make the film "The Lodger", adapted from the "Jack the Ripper Case".
Then in 1927 he shot the thriller Downhill, and in 1929 he shot the first sound film in the history of British cinema, Blackmail. Several thriller films set the tone for his work. In 1935, his film Thirty-Ninth Step was hailed as one of the "100 Greatest British Films in Film History".
Hollywood years
In 1938, Hitchcock, already well-known overseas, was awarded the title of Gold Medal Producer David M. Hitchcock. At the invitation of O. Selznick, he began his life as a Hollywood film.
In 1939, he moved to the United States and filmed the film Butterfly Dream, which was also listed as one of the "100 Greatest British Films in Film History";
By his death in 1980, he had made 53 suspense films that could be said to be immortalized in the annals of film history, including North by Northwest, Deep Doubt, Telephone Murder, Ecstasy, and Horror, and in 1979, he won the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
The Master of The Technology Stream
Many of Hitchcock's shooting methods, whether it is lens design or bridge setting, are systematically learned and applied at the moment, and it can be said that he is a technical flow talent.
He never wastes the camera to show meaningless things, and sometimes a bridge section that takes people into the ditch requires the audience to climb out on their own.
"The MacGuffin Method"
When I first heard this technique, I had only one word in my mind: wonderful.
What is MacGuffin? Academic definition is "an opportunity, a plot, or something that the characters are desperately chasing that may not exist."
For MacGuffin, Hitchcock explains:
"On the train, one passenger took the strange-looking luggage, and the other passenger curiously asked what was in the luggage, and the other person replied: McGuffin. Curious passengers continued to ask what was MacGuffin, and the other person replied: "Used to catch lions in the Scottish Highlands." Curious passengers were more curious, asked, but there were no lions there. The other person replied, "Oh, then there's no McGuffin."
In the movie North by Northwest, the protagonist is hunted down for being mistaken for a spy named "Caplin", and the whole story begins, and he needs to find the real "Caplin". The non-existent "Caplin" is "MacGuffin";
In the movie "Butterfly Dream", "McGuffin" is the male protagonist's ex-wife "Rebecca" who has long passed away and never appeared, but tortured everyone.
"The Bomb of Suspense"
"Bombs must never explode" is one of Hitchcock's most classic theories.
Suspense movies, like literary works, require the audience's full attention and attention in order to tap into the ultimate fun together. The "bomb" is a means of mobilizing the audience's emotions. Hitchcock proposed two scenarios:
In the first case, two people were sitting and chatting, and all of a sudden, a bomb that was invisible under the table exploded. The audience is frightened, but it lasts for 15 seconds, and the fright is digested by the body;
In the second case, the same scene, the viewer sees the bomb countdown under the table for 15 minutes, while two people come in and start chatting. Then in the 15 minutes of the countdown, if the bomb does not explode, the audience will never be at peace.
Hitchcock controls the film the whole time, whether it is the plot, the scenes, the actors or the hearts of the audience.
"Heath's Lens Language and Metaphor"
At a time when film technology was not yet developed, Hitchcock was like an alien visitor, who had mastered the ability to speak with the camera.
The famous scene in the movie "Ecstasy", the "Hitchcock zoom", which has been imitated countless times by later generations, brings a sense of emotional oppression through the expansion or distortion of space.
Equally famous is the metaphor of Xi Fat.
In the movie "North by Northwest", the metaphor of the train entering the cave after the male and female protagonists kiss is quite naughty.
Skin, hang nose
Wonderful montage, Xi Fat is not absent as usual.
The footage of the bathroom sharen in the movie "Horror Story" should not only be less bloody, but also reflect the fear and despair of the victims at that time. Hitchcock used 78 shots to show the clip, which was constantly imitated and homaged later.
Remember Penny's "Sand Ape" starring In The Big Bang Theory?
Hitchcock and Fashion
After reading some of Hitchcock's photographs, Apoque thought that if he had been born a century later, he would have been a maverick fashion blogger.
In fact, he did have a certain influence on the fashion industry.
In his film Birds, the scene of the bird attacking people is a childhood shadow of many people. And the heroine Tibby Headley, who was a fashion model in New York at the time, her style in the movie was also very stunning.
Years later, designer Alexander McQueen, who grew up watching Hitchcock films, designed a series of bird-themed fashions. It is not difficult to see that the inspiration comes from the film of Xi Fat.
A lifetime of struggles and likes and dislikes
"5 minutes from the police station"
When Hitchcock was five or six years old, he was "taken off" by his father for being naughty, and was imprisoned by Uncle J.C. for five minutes. These five minutes may have cast a shadow over his life, causing him to fear JC all the time.
As a child, xiang Xiaozi later created a number of amazing works about "fear" and "crime".
"Weight Loss: Unfinished Business"
Hitchcock was able to master his work skillfully, but not his body type.
The fat figure is his life's dilemma, when the soul of a pixie ghost is confined to a clumsy body, as a film director, he also hopes that he can one day go to the clothing store to buy clothes freely, rather than wearing a custom suit forever.
But after several diets, the weight loss program went bankrupt. But Xi Fat still did not forget to say, "My work is tall, thin and handsome."
"Blonde Beauty"
When Hitchcock was a child, a blonde girl was poisoned and killed near his home. So much so that in later works, the blonde often appeared as his protagonist.
And most of the heroine's task is to appear and be killed. He even said, "Blonde women are best suited to be murdered!" Red blood flows through the white skin, blonde hair is so dazzling" is a kind of slightly BT-like words.
Among the many blonde beauties, Grace Kelly was Hitchcock's muse queen.
She is elegant, beautiful, full of wisdom, and is also particularly favored by Xi Fat. In the movie Rear Window, Hitchcock gave her the role of a capable, excellent, independent woman.
"Gold Medal Dragon Set"
Xi Fat also has a hobby, that is, running dragon sets in his own movies.
In North by Northwest, he misses a bus:
In "A Lonely Boat in the Angry Sea", he presents it with a diet pill advertisement:
In "Flock of Birds", he leads two West Highland white terriers and the heroine to pass by:
What is this called? Yes, it's called stealing.
Have time to watch movies together: a must-read for beginners
Hitchcock's more than fifty films and several suspenseful episodes have selected a few must-sees for beginners, each of which is a degree that can be slapped on the thigh, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to watch the movie together:
North by Northwest"
"Rear Window"
"Horror Story"
Ecstasy
Don't go, what hitchcock movies have you seen, welcome to share ~