Alfred Hitchcock was a famous English film director born in 1899. He directed his first thriller, "The Lodger", in 1926 which was a commercial and critical success. Some of his most famous films include "The 39 Steps" from 1935, "Rebecca" from 1940 which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and "Psycho" from 1960, which is considered his best known film. Throughout his career, Hitchcock became known for his use of techniques like close-ups, unique camera movements, and manipulated sounds to create suspense and engage audiences.

1. Alfred Hitchcock
Case Study

2. Early Life
Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899, and was the youngest of his family. He lived
in Leytonstone, England and grew up there. When he was 15 his father died and
during that same year he started school at the London County Council School of
Engineering and Navigation. Once he finished studying there he became a draftsman
for a cable company. He was rejected from the army during the first world war
because he was obese but joined the cadet regiment of the royal engineers in 1917.
When he was working for the cable company he would do articles for the newspaper
they did. He wrote “The Woman” for the first issue of the newspaper which was
centred around a woman imagining she was assaulted in Paris but was really in a
dentist's chair under the effects of anaesthetics. He did many of these sort of
articles for the newspaper.
He later on in life took on photography and film while he was in London. He had a
job as a title card for the company which later on will be paramount pictures. He
designed title sequences for silent movies and it took him 5 years to finally become
a film director. His first thriller “The Lodger” was released in 1926, which was about
a ‘Jack the Ripper’ type serial killer, got major commercial and critical success in the
UK.

3. After the success which The Lodger was he continued to direct
another thriller called Blackmail, which was released in 1929. It is
known to be “the first British sound feature film” for it was one for
the first films of the time to have sound.
He then created the film The 39 Steps, and it is known as one of his
best films. The British Film Institute have ranked it as the fourth
greatest films of the 20th century. It also got him fame in the US, so
his success and reputation grew.
He came to be known as Alfred the Great after the Picturegoer
magazine published an article about him in the 1930s and the New
York Time also wrote an article about him which also got him and his
thrillers even more attention.
In 1939 he was signed a 7 year contract with David O. Selznick from
Hollywood and his family and himself moved to the US.

4. Hitchcock in Hollywood
In 1940 Hitchcock directed Rebecca, and this film won an Academy Award for Best
Picture. He had disagreements with Selznick throughout the whole time they worked
together on many films. Hitchcock later released hat he says is his favourite film,
“Shadow of a Doubt” in 1943. I thing that Hitchcock did in all his films was make an
appearance in nearly all if them at one point. In the film “Lifeboat” Hitchcock's image
appears in a newspaper article that William Bendix, who was staring in the film, was
reading showing the director in an advertisement. This film was one of the few he
directed for 20th Century Fox.
The two British propaganda films that Hitchcock made for the British Ministry of
Information were the only films Hitchcock made in French. He also was asked to be the
treatment advisor on a documentary about the holocaust that used footage provided by
the British Army. In 1945 he worked with Selznick again on the film “spellbound”, which
did have a long dream sequence but Selznick edited it down to 10 minutes long. The film
also has a two two point-of-view shots which were achieved by having a large wooden
hand built along with out-sized props for it to hold and would appear to belong to the
character whose point of view the camera took. For added novelty and impact, the
climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on the black-and-white film which gave it a
unique viewing to the audience. His next film “Notorious” was a box office hit and after
many arguments and one final film, Hitchcock left and created his own production
company - Transatlantic Pictures.

5. Because for he now had his own production company, Hitchcock could experiment
with different techniques like ‘marshalling suspense in a confined environment’.
Appearing to have been shot in a single take, the film “Rope” was actually shot in
10 takes ranging from four and a half to 10 minutes each. At this time the cameras
could only hole 10-minute length of film magazine at the maximum. Some
transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen
for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut and began the next take
with the camera in the same place. He used many techniques like this and later on
he used Technicolour for a number of films. But after two films being failures, he
stopped for a small while in making films.
Many say that the 1950s were the best times Hitchcock produced films. His best
known films he released of this time was “Dial M for Murder”, which started
Hitchcock using colour again and “Vertigo”, which Hitchcock used ‘Dolly Zoom’ to
create an effect with the camera which makes the scene ‘stretch’.
Later on in the 1960s, Hitchcock made his best known film “Psycho”. This is his all
time best film and his best known film too. It was a starting point for many thriller
horrors and was Hitchcock's most profitable film with him making $15 million.
After this Hitchcock was one of the owners of Universal and technically was his
own boss. His did another film which used similar sounds which we associate with
“Psycho” called “The Birds”.
His last film was released in 1976 called “Family Plot”.

6. Hitchcock’s Techniques Which I Can Use
The techniques which Hitchcock was known for was using
close ups of the character’s faces’ to convey their reactions
and emotions in different scenarios. I can do this as well for
my thriller and I can use close ups on objects too to
represent their importance.
He also used the technique ‘Dolly Zoom’ which makes the
scene stretch and gives a unique effect. I can try to use this
to make the characters disoriented.
I can also try to make sound effects inspired by the ones in
“Psycho” to give my thriller a disturbing feel and make the
audience understand the sort of situation the characters
will be in.