Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock called The Lodger "the first true Hitchcock movie," the one that anticipated all the others. And yet the story of how The Lodger came to be made is shrouded in myth, often repeated and much embellished, even by Hitchcock himself. The First True Hitchcock focuses on the twelve-month period that encompassed The Lodger's production in 1926 and release in 1927, presenting a new picture of this pivotal year in
Hitchcock's life and in the wider film world. Using fresh archival discoveries, Henry K. Miller situates Hitchcock's formation as a director against the backdrop of a continent shattered by war and confronted with the looming presence of a new superpower, the United States, and its most visible export—film. The previously untold story of The Lodger's making in the London fog—and attempted remaking in the Los Angeles sun—is the story of how Hitchcock became Hitchcock.

Gilbert 13:2 (October-November 2009): 9.  An essay in the Miscellany of Men feature in the magazine, this one treats of Alfred Hitchcock's life and work, with particular attention to the influence exercised on him by the work of G. K. Chesterton.

All movies are obviously made of moving pictures, but in Hitchcock's case images have such power as to be permanently engraved in viewers' minds beyond the story they belong to. And such images go hand-in-hand with equally strong emotions: they have forever fixed our minds on what we felt when we first saw them. This Dossier exxplores how Hitchcock used his natural talent in film narration, with particular reference to "suspense". Part 2 is also available at Academia.edu

A partire dal triplice intreccio con cui lega insieme filosofia hegeliana, psicoanalisi lacaniana e cultura di massa, Slavoj Žižek si propone sin dai suoi primi lavori di indagare i fenomeni sociali, allo scopo di disvelare le dinamiche che intervengono nel processo di costruzione della soggettività e con esse il significato politico delle fantasie ideologiche, fantasie di controllo, di completezza ed esclusione, che determinano il funzionamento della società in cui tale soggetto si colloca.
Pensatore più che filosofo, per dirlo in termini deleuziani, ovvero figura nomadica che muove concetti continuamente riarticolandoli, con i suoi scritti Žižek offre alla teoria psicoanalitica dell’ideologia un contributo capace di dare un’interpretazione persuasiva di molte formazioni culturali contemporanee, prima tra tutte il cinema, che egli erige a privilegiato oggetto di riflessione e terreno di verifica del proprio paradigma teorico.
“Arte perversa per eccellenza”, il cinema più che proporre al soggetto la gratificazione del suo desiderio, punta invece ad indicargli “come desiderare” , in virtù della sua peculiare capacità di metterci direttamente a confronto con le pulsioni più nascoste, rimosse e negate dall’individuo e dalla società, consentendo così di passare al setaccio le relazioni tra sguardo e desiderio, fantasia e realtà (entrambe in senso lacaniano), ovvero di indagare il declinarsi della dialettica da cui deriva il soggetto stesso, quella tra i tre assi del simbolico, dell’immaginario e del reale. È infatti dall’avvicendarsi di queste tre dimensioni, o meglio dall’intrecciarsi infinito di simbolico e immaginario (dimensione del linguaggio e della cultura, e dimensione costitutiva dell’io nella relazione con l’altro) intorno alla dimensione traumatica del reale (dimensione pre-simbolica della jouissance) 2, che si evidenzia con chiarezza il continuo scambio in atto tra dinamiche individuali e formazioni socio-simboliche, tra soggettività e Grande Altro, quali istanze inscindibilmente legate tra loro da una comune “struttura ontologica”, che Žižek, come Lacan, individua nella dinamica psichica del fantasma (fantasia). Da “idiosincrasia soggettiva”3 quindi, com’era in Freud (ossia una formazione ausiliaria derivante dal trauma dell’impossibilità di realizzazione dei propri desideri), il fantasma diviene qui “struttura ontologica”, la quale in definitiva, costituisce il soggetto, ma lo costituisce in senso negativo, ovvero come “frustrazione nella sua essenza”

Everybody knows that Vertigo is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic masterpieces. However, only a few scholars have discussed the hidden correspondences between that film and the Surrealist poetics. The following text moves away from the gender interpretations omnipresent in the film’s bibliography since Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Instead, it will explore its visual elements, especially those associated with the art direction and the cinematography as well, in order to achieve a clear correspondence with the Surrealist "pensée en images", and with the concepts of “shock” and “optical unconscious” enunciated by Walter Benjamin in his seminal work “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Techonological Reproducibility”. The last section of this paper is dedicated to the analysis of locations and set design in the movie, whose combination of architectural milestones in San Francisco and banal locations are the visual realization of the Surrealist “marvelous in the everyday”.
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Nadie duda que Vértigo es una de las obras maestras en la producción de Alfred Hitchcock. Sin embargo, pocos autores se han detenido en analizar las correspondencias latentes entre dicha película y las poéticas surrealistas. El siguiente artículo se aleja de las interpretaciones de género omnipresentes en la bibliografía desde el artículo de Laura Mulvey “Placer visual y cine narrativo”, para indagar en los aspectos visuales del filme, especialmente en aquellos relacionados con la cinematografía y la dirección artística, a fin de establecer una clara correspondencia con el concepto de pensée en images postulado por el surrealismo visual y literario, así como en los conceptos de shock e inconsciente óptico formulados por Walter Benjamin en su obra fundacional “La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica”. Las localizaciones y el diseño de decorados conforman la última parte del siguiente análisis interpretativo, en el que se combinan la naturaleza de algunos de ellos como hitos urbanos y la banalidad de otros espacios para materializar lo “maravilloso cotidiano” surrealista.

The overall success of a film director results from his artistic style in his films, as well as his mark on the films he directs, also known as the Auteur Theory. A director ¶s use of stylish and thematic consistencies, recurring themes and symbolism, established techniques, and personal aesthetic vision, greatly draw a film together. As a film director continues to create movies, his own character increasingly develops, as can be seen in his works. He has a determined view of the world, and demonstrates this throughout his films. What greatly contributes to a director ¶s personality, however, is not just his overall vision of the universe, but the way in which he produces this exemplar into various filming techniques on the big screen, also known as his technical achievement. Through clever camera angles, flow of scenes, costume design, and the like, a film director makes use of these skills to direct an interesting and unique film. One of the greatest of these film directors is Alfred Hitchcock, a master of suspense. In his films, his creative use of various film techniques combine to make a classic thriller movie, as well as demonstrate his outlook of the world. The purpose of this

Screenwriter Charles Bennett was Hitchcock's mentor throughout the 1930's.  He created the "trademark scenario" utilized by the Master of Suspense, authoring seven films directed by Hitchcock.  But Hitchcock hid Bennett's influence, and film scholarship mistakenly disregarded Bennett in favor of either Hitchcock, as"auteur," or novelist John Buchan.  This two volume study penetrates through Hitchcock's obfuscations to reveal Bennett as the author of the technically Modern thriller, the staged hero's journey construction, and Hitchcock's trademark "wrong man" scenario.  It reveals the scope of Hitchcock's lies and deceit, and addresses many previously unanswered questions in Hitchcock studies.  Volume One "The Partnership" focuses on the partners' very productive but often dysfunctional relationship. Volume Two "Hero's Journey & Story Closeups" analyzes Bennett's constructions, characterizations, and the application of his thriller story elements.  Volume Two concludes by revealing Hitchcock's terror that his reliance on Bennett would be found out.  The set is accompanied by a foreword by Hitchcock biographer Patrick McGilligan. 
For purchase see:  www.amazon.com/author/johncharlesbennett

Tutti i film sono naturalmente fatti di immagini in movimento, ma nel caso di quelli girati da Hitchcock le immagini hanno una tale forza e potere da imprimersi nella memoria degli spettatori al di là della storia a cui appartengono. E questi ricordi si accompagnano ad emozioni altrettanto forti: le immagini hanno fissato per sempre nella nostra mente quello che abbiamo provato mentre le guardavamo. Questo Dossier esplora come Hitchcock ha saputo sfruttare il suo talento visivo mettendolo al servizio della narrazione cinematografica, in particolare nella costruzione della suspense. La Seconda parte è pure disponibile su Academia.edu

La Seconda parte di questo Dossier continua ad esplorare come Hitchcock ha saputo sfruttare il suo talento visivo mettendolo al servizio della narrazione cinematografica, in particolare nella costruzione della "suspense" come strategia alternativa alla "sorpresa", in un "gioco a tre" che comprende il film, il regista e lo spettatore.

Film theorist/critic David Bordwell once noted that film scholars "know how to make movies mean." Filmmakers, regardless of their receptiveness to critical interpretations of their work, might find some irony in this locus of the meaning-maker's identity. Through their choices, filmmakers are the ones who "make movies mean" in the first place. In my film-in-progress, Penelope's Odyssey, I decided to consciously engage with the post-facto vision of meaning-making. Employing a purposeful approach to film form, limited dialogue, and minimal narrative-driven action, I "make my movie mean" and make viewers' interpretive activity requisite to understanding. Penelope's Odyssey consists of short sections set apart with intertitles that are both precise and elusive (Year One: Settling, Year Ten: Slipping, Year Fifteen: Pushing, etc.). Each section has a distinctive schematic of film technique and visual content, making film form the power source of narrative changes in Penelope's emotional journey over the twenty years of Odysseus' absence. One year employs quick straight cuts, another slow fades to black, another superimposes images with dissolves-establishing a different mood, rhythm, and pace to the passage of time for each year. Penelope's perspective and world view change: from images filling the frame to ones cropped, reduced, and nearly overwhelmed by a black background; from the domestic sphere to scenes in nature; from point-of-view to omniscience. Close-ups connote intimacy-or is that claustrophobia? Long shots, a sense of emotional and physical distancing-or perhaps contemplative ease? By deliberately emphasizing variations of form, I aim viewers' attention at a highly premeditated, mediated, and intentional space, encouraging reflection and meaning-creation. Ambiguity is inherent in this process, and viewers' interpretations may result in alternative narrative conclusions. I made my own meaning out of Penelope's twenty years, and I actively offer the same option to my viewers.

Con questo studio intendiamo rintracciare nella filmografia di Alfred Hitchcock alcuni τòποι propri della cultura classica greca, qui intesa come espressione di due poli rappresentati da un lato dall’esperienza della tragedia attica, dall’altro dal testo nel quale compare la prima codificazione della stessa, la Poetica di Aristotele. In particolare faremo riferimento al πάθει μάθος aristotelico e soprattutto cristiano.

Part 2 of this Dossier continues to explore how Hitchcock used his natural visual talent in film narration, particularly in building "suspense" rather than "surprise", and establishing a "three-way game" betrween the film, the director and the audience.

Critics have long suggested that children characters reveal important ambivalences in Hitchcock, largely thwarting nostalgia without surrendering their innocence, both inciting and implicating adult characters and contributing thereby to Hitchcock’s complicated appeal to middle-class audiences.  "Strangers on a Train" famously casts the director’s own daughter as Barbara Morton, a knowing innocent whose sharp wit allows the audience both to engage with and detach from the narrative.  But after dominating her early scenes, Barbara is crucially humbled by the end; most notably, Barbara’s vulnerability to the director’s signature visual strategies grows precisely as her social authority shrinks, her character’s trajectory thus dramatizing the defining ambivalence in Hitchcock’s treatments of his screen children.

A partire dal triplice intreccio con cui lega insieme filosofia hegeliana, psicoanalisi lacaniana e cultura di massa, Slavoj Žižek si propone sin dai suoi primi lavori di indagare i fenomeni sociali, allo scopo di disvelare le dinamiche che intervengono nel processo di costruzione della soggettività e con esse il significato politico delle fantasie ideologiche, fantasie di controllo, di completezza ed esclusione, che determinano il funzionamento della società in cui tale soggetto si colloca. Pensatore più che filosofo, per dirlo in termini deleuziani, ovvero figura nomadica che muove concetti continuamente riarticolandoli, con i suoi scritti Žižek offre alla teoria psicoanalitica dell’ideologia un contributo capace di dare un’interpretazione persuasiva di molte formazioni culturali contemporanee, prima tra tutte il cinema, che egli erige a privilegiato oggetto di riflessione e terreno di verifica del proprio paradigma teorico. “Arte perversa per eccellenza”, il cinema più che proporre al soggetto la gratificazione del suo desiderio, punta invece ad indicargli “come desiderare” , in virtù della sua peculiare capacità di metterci direttamente a confronto con le pulsioni più nascoste, rimosse e negate dall’individuo e dalla società, consentendo così di passare al setaccio le relazioni tra sguardo e desiderio, fantasia e realtà (entrambe in senso lacaniano), ovvero di indagare il declinarsi della dialettica da cui deriva il soggetto stesso, quella tra i tre assi del simbolico, dell’immaginario e del reale. È infatti dall’avvicendarsi di queste tre dimensioni, o meglio dall’intrecciarsi infinito di simbolico e immaginario (dimensione del linguaggio e della cultura, e dimensione costitutiva dell’io nella relazione con l’altro) intorno alla dimensione traumatica del reale (dimensione pre-simbolica della jouissance) 2, che si evidenzia con chiarezza il continuo scambio in atto tra dinamiche individuali e formazioni socio-simboliche, tra soggettività e Grande Altro, quali istanze inscindibilmente legate tra loro da una comune “struttura ontologica”, che Žižek, come Lacan, individua nella dinamica psichica del fantasma (fantasia). Da “idiosincrasia soggettiva”3 quindi, com’era in Freud (ossia una formazione ausiliaria derivante dal trauma dell’impossibilità di realizzazione dei propri desideri), il fantasma diviene qui “struttura ontologica”, la quale in definitiva, costituisce il soggetto, ma lo costituisce in senso negativo, ovvero come “frustrazione nella sua essenza”

"The French contemporary artist Pierre Huyghe enjoys international acclaim, witness the many one-person and group exhibitions in which his work has been featured, and the prizes he has been awarded. His workplace in New York City, where this interview was conducted on January 20th, 2017, is an office where research and thinking take place and not a studio where things are made. The work Huyghe and/or others produce following his directives seems based upon raising questions, but what these are is unclear. Therefore, what the answers are is equally so".

https://www.theartsection.com/pierre-huyghe

About this book
About the authors
This book offers a new approach to film studies by showing how our brains use our interpretations of various other films in order to understand Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Borrowing from behavioral psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, author Robert J. Belton seeks to explain differences of critical opinion as inevitable.
The book begins by introducing the hermeneutic spiral, a cognitive processing model that categorizes responses to Vertigo’s meaning, ranging from wide consensus to wild speculations of critical “outliers.” Belton then provides an overview of the film, arguing that different interpreters literally see and attend to different things. The fourth chapter builds on this conclusion, arguing that because people see different things, one can force the production of new meanings by deliberately drawing attention to unusual comparisons. The latter chapters outline a number of such comparisons—including avant-garde films and the works of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch—to shed new light on the meanings of Vertigo.

1 HITCHCOCK'S SPELLBOUND -eine kurze, ausschnitthafte Analyse über die moderne Dramaturgie dieses Films -oder: Wie raffiniert Alfred Hitchcock von der dramatischen Struktur ablenkt SPELLBOUND (USA 1946) war schon zum Zeitpunkt seines Erscheinens ein besonders erfolgreicher Film, auch wenn andere, spätere Filme Alfred Hitchcocks -wie PSYCHO (USA 1960) oder BIRDS (USA 1963) -eher einen Kultstatus erlangt haben. Vom Kassenerfolg her war er den zweiterfolgreichste der vierziger Jahre, für 6 Oscars nominiert, hat einen gewonnen. 1 In den Gesprächen mit Francois Truffaut -WIE HABEN SIE ES GEMACHT, MR. HITCHCOCK?nimmt der Film nur einen geringen Raum ein. Truffaut mag ihn nicht besonders, hält Gregory Peck für eine Fehlbesetzung 2 und Hitchcock antwortet darauf, dass der Film wohl doch kompliziert sei. Vielleicht mag ich ihn deshalb besonders, mich reizt die raffinierte Struktur dieses Films, die Kombination von analytischem Drama mit einer klassischen Liebesgeschichte, wie sie bereits das pièce bien faite gehand habt hat. Das Besondere des Films liegt darin, dass Hitchcock hier bereits mit einer sehr modernen Dramaturgie operiert hat, die man eben kurz gefasst als 'kompliziert' bezeichnen kann -oder, wie eine Donald Spoto Ingrid Bergman zitiert -mit "that touch of art" 3 . Es werden zwei verschiedene Geschichten miteinander verflochten, zwei Genrekonventionen kombiniert. Die Basiserzählung, die dem Film die Struktur gibt, ist die um Mord, falsche Verdächtigungen und die Jagd nach einem Mörder. Da aber die Liebesgeschichte stark emotional affektiv wirkt, gelingt es Hitchcock die dramaturgische Struktur, also die explizite Dramaturgie 4 , des Films mithilfe von falschen Fährten und Emotionen auslösenden Affekten zu überdecken. Dramaturgisch gesehen kann man ihn auch als offen erzählt einstufen, da er Raum für unterschiedliche Interpretationen bietet. Das Publikum kann sich von der Liebesgeschichte in den Bann schlagen lassen, es kann sich auf Interpretationen in Bezug auf Psychoanalysemit Diskussion unterdrückter Sexualität 5 (die schon wegen der damaligen Zensurregelungen unmöglich gezeigt werden konnte) oder der Darstellung des Vaterbeziehungsweise Ödipuskomplexes und/oder des Verhältnisses von Emotionalität und Rationalität als Darstellung von Freuds These vom Ich und Es. In der weit gefächerten Literatur zu Hitchcock wird erwähnt, dass der Anstoß zu dem Projekt vom Produzenten Selznick ausging, der sich mit einen Film über Psychoanalyse einen erneuten großen Kinoerfolg erhofft hat. Hitchcock brachte die Idee und die Filmrechte 6 des Romans THE HOUSE OF

Film theorist/critic David Bordwell once noted that film scholars-know how to make movies mean.‖ Filmmakers, regardless of their receptiveness to critical interpretations of their work, might find some irony in this locus of the meaning-maker's identity. Through their choices, filmmakers are the ones who-make movies mean‖ in the first place. In my film-in-progress, Penelope's Odyssey, I decided to consciously engage with the post-facto vision of meaningmaking. Employing a purposeful approach to film form, limited dialogue, and minimal narrative-driven action, I-make my movie mean‖ and make viewers' interpretive activity requisite to understanding. Penelope's Odyssey consists of short sections set apart with intertitles that are both precise and elusive (Year One: Settling, Year Ten: Slipping, Year Fifteen: Pushing, etc.). Each section has a distinctive schematic of film technique and visual content, making film form the power source of narrative changes in Penelope's emotional journey over the twenty years of Odysseus' absence. One year employs quick straight cuts, another slow fades to black, another superimposes images with dissolvesestablishing a different mood, rhythm, and pace to the passage of time for each year. Penelope's perspective and world view change: from images filling the frame to ones cropped, reduced, and nearly overwhelmed by a black background; from the domestic sphere to scenes in nature; from point-of-view to omniscience. Close-ups connote intimacyor is that claustrophobia? Long shots, a sense of emotional and physical distancingor perhaps contemplative ease? By deliberately emphasizing variations of form, I aim viewers' attention at a highly premeditated, mediated, and intentional space, encouraging reflection and meaning-creation. Ambiguity is inherent in this process, and viewers' interpretations may result in alternative narrative conclusions. I made my own meaning out of Penelope's twenty years, and I actively offer the same option to my viewers.

In the films "North by Northwest," "Vertigo," and "Marnie," Hitchcock's blonde serves as a means of disclosing truth to Hitchcock's Everyman, particularly if associating that disclosedness in a Heideggerian way, whereby the worlds of Hitchcock's cinema provide "a clearing" for the Everyman. In effect, the Blonde, as "Aletheia"--that which unconcealed what has been concealed--operates similarly to the Goddess in Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus. If applying Heidegger's notion of Aletheia to Hitchcock's Blonde, it is apparent that, as the femme fatale and the Everyman's "symptom" (in a Lacanian sense), Hitchcock envisions the female lead as that which "unconceals" what has been previously hidden from the Everyman--each blonde provides each Everyman with a way through the Hitchcockian world by destroying the metaphysics of that world (in the same sense as Heidegger intends for "Being and Time to destroy the history of metaphysics) and leading the Everyman to a "clearing" that yields an unconcealment of not just the Everyman's "being-in-the-world" after having encountered the Blonde, but also of a Dasein-like existence that ties together the Everyman's pre-Blonde world to the post-Blonde world. At that point, the Everyman's life is placed in the "clearing"--which is accomplished to different degrees by James Stewart in "Vertigo," Cary Grant in "North by Northwest," and Sean Connery in "Marnie"--and what has been unconcealed is not only the unconcealment of the Blonde's "being" but an disclosedness of the Everyman's "being," often to a deconstructive effect.