5 Masterpieces of Alfred Hitchcock

At the end of the XIX age, a man was born in London who was prepared to create a new direction in cinema - a unique genre of suspense, which kept in suspense and makes the viewer tremble in anticipation of something incredible and frightening.

He is the standard of a detective in cinema, a master of intrigue and a king of horror. His name is Alfred Hitchcock.

Let's recall some masterpieces of the great director.

1. Psycho

What can take the viewer like nothing else? What is new that can be conveyed and possibly revealed to the viewer? Hitchcock was puzzled by this main question at that time. Despite the great regression of ideas and ideas at that time, the risky creators were the most successful.

And Hitchcock chose the right solution. To create what people previously did not see on the screen. To create wild horror, which as if will jump on the audience from the screen. Give the viewer a couple of hours of adventure, secrets, riddles and screams. Black and white film will convey everything just fine. Colors were not required here. The faces, and blood say everything there.

Psycho' literally instantly won the attention of the audience, while collecting a very good box office. People were afraid, fought in hysteria, were nervous, hid behind a pillow. Indeed, in our days the film is watched in one breath. The scene in the shower looks very detailed and realistic, and at the same time, it does not stand out with a large amount of blood and cruelty. You just look and understand how terrible it is. This 'naked helplessness', this sharp and shiny knife that penetrates the body of an innocent victim.

An ordinary road detective, suddenly turns into something else. Murder. The murder of a woman. Cold-blooded violence gives impetus to the further development of events. Even more confusing, creepy, and most importantly interesting.

A carefully crafted story emerges on the screen as well as possible. From the first frames of the film, even when the credits go on, you can understand that the film will be sharp, angry, and possibly cruel.

This film gave Hitchcock the title of king of horrors. The king of fears and nightmares, on whose shoulder a raven black with night eyes always sits. The master, whose further creations will be perceived by the audience with a bang, and most of them will become classics of world cinema.

2. The Birds

From ancient times, the bird was considered a widespread symbol of spirit and soul in the ancient world. According to legend, the Indian tree of life was inhabited by birds that symbolized human souls.

How cute and feathered they are. People like to feed them with their hands and look at them at the zoo. Indeed, people thought so until Alfred Hitchcock decided to show people what these cute birds are capable of and what they can be.

Alfred Hitchcock's films have always been surprising in their strangeness and special atmosphere. I think if passers-by on the street of your city ask the question: 'Whom do you consider the king of horrors', then his name will be one of the most common. Indeed, Hitchcock was able to make such films that were sealed in the memory of the viewer for a long time, and often for life.

The special ability to make horror films without focusing on liters of blood and brutal murders is perhaps the most basic thing that exists in Hitchcock films. The 1963 film The Birds was no exception. The film was released 3 years after the sensational nightmare Psycho. The people naturally flee to watch the new creation of the already great director.

It is worth noting that the “Birds” in the general atmosphere is not worse than “Psycho” in anything, but you can even say that it caused much more interest in the first half of the film. To the end, the incomprehensible relationship between a local celebrity and a well-known and charming lawyer in a pet store really attracts. At the beginning of the film, everything looks like a love story. Hard and capricious love.

Talking about the film in detail makes no sense, it just needs to be watched. To see how Mr. Hitchcock frightens us at first glance with harmless birds. Agree, for that time it was possible to make a film about rabid and bloodthirsty crocodiles or dinosaurs. At that time, the viewer demanded as much as possible new, that which he had not seen before. But taking a much more ordinary option, Hitchcock shocked the audience with his work. Pleasantly shocked.

The incredible warmth at the very beginning of the film, formed from the beauty of the main character and intriguing love relationships, sharply develops into wild and chilling fear and cold, when the birds suddenly start a real war against people. Hitchcock successfully mixed love drama, thriller, and detective in one bottle. Moreover, with regards to the detective, his move just worked perfectly.

The softness and smoothness of the storyline, perhaps, is also one of the advantages of this film. Hitchcock did everything just perfect. Dead calm quite easily develops into a real storm. There is no sharp installation and frantic frame dynamics. It is as if he is preparing the viewer for something terrible, and when he is ready, Hitchcock begins to stir terror.

3. Rear Window

Of all the Hitchcock films that I saw, this one, in my opinion, is the most cinematic, the most delicate, in a word, the most brilliant. In general, Alfred knew exactly the essence of human emotions and never descended to the level of a dumb scarecrow. His game is a game of human feelings. His style, creating the right atmosphere is not so much through the visual as atmospheric. Creating a gradually increasing sense of anxiety in a person from the depths of the soul, touching the thinnest spiritual strings.

This is a movie for a thinking person, for a movie fan who loves, while watching a film, through his own prism to delve into himself. Cinema for an elite audience who truly loves art, brand goods.

The film reveals for us one of the main needs of a person - to peek into the keyhole, figuratively speaking. From such forbidden fruit, in fact, you can not resist. And LOVE is to blame for everything; it moves the main mechanisms in a person, allowing you to forget about other equally important needs and excitement of the imagination at the same time.

The clue is simple and commonplace. A man who has broken his leg is forced to wallow all day at home, where his only entertainment is a window, beyond which opens the personal life of his neighbors. Each of the neighbors, in turn, is quite worthy of the whole film, because, despite the fact that we only have the opportunity to watch them, we really discover the whole world.

There are no secondary characters, each has its own life drama, which we would not have known about if we had not watched their secret life. This film is about a public, ostentatious life, about which everyone knows, and about private personal life, about which, except for yourself, no one knows.

Despite the fact that this is a thriller, he is not scary, he is rather attractively anxious and romantic. At the same time, anxiety and romance, in fact, incompatible things in this film create an absolutely brilliant atmosphere of the film.

From a technical point of view, the film is incomparable. It seems that the film was shot in Hitchcock’s head, and then transferred to the film.

Conclusion: This is a film with a capital letter. A movie that will never be again. Many will strive for it, copy it, but no one will ever surpass this ingenious monument of cinema, which will delight true connoisseurs of art for many years to come.

4. Vertigo

Vertigo is a film that was not very highly praised by critics and did not have much success at the box office, but is now considered to be a masterpiece of the genre and looks very modern.

The atmosphere of this psychological thriller is overwhelming, very tense. The plot of the film is divided into 2 parts, very different in their mood.

“Vertigo” is a very measured, meditative film, completely unlike other works of the master. The main thing in it is not the plot, not the suspense, and not even the perfect play of the actors (although Hitchcock himself was not happy with it, and he never shot them again), but the impeccably built atmosphere of true love, which is always a true obsession.

In addition, to recreate the effect of vertigo from height, Hitchcock first used the technique of rapid approximation of the background, now called the “zoom” and used everywhere, as with the need and without it.

The relations of the main characters resemble a game of hide and seek, when, with closeness and unity of motives, they are forced to hide themselves from each other. However, the last part is no longer a detective story, it is a romantic story penetrated by the depth of psychoanalysis, where the ghosts of unconscious manipulations come to replace feelings.

The genre frames of “Vertigo” are blurred, there is the tension of the thriller and the signs of a purely Hollywood melodrama, and the detective line is worthy of the classics of the genre, but at the same time there is a large share of psychology, passing from the chamber beauty to the realistic tragedy of great love.

I summarize. "Vertigo" is a very high-quality work, made with great talent and professionalism, worthy of numerous revision and an honorable place in your home movie collection. It is one of the best directorial works of Alfred Hitchcock, a cult movie that is timeless. I certainly recommended for viewing. Masterpiece!

5. Rebecca

The name Alfred Hitchcock is associated with the genre - horrors. At the sound of his name, pictures of medieval castles filled with otherworldly strength pop up. There are images of crazy people wandering with a dagger behind their backs and trying to hit someone's back. “Rebecca” is one of these paintings, in which there are no terrifying moments, there is only an exciting style of narration and a well-developed storyline.

Rebecca is the first film of the prominent British director Alfred Hitchcock, shot by him in Hollywood. And as is often the case with many European filmmakers making their first films in a new field, their style is undergoing some changes. There is no suspense, murder, investigation, and so on. But there is something else - a magnificent romantic story with a touch of mysticism.

Lawrence Olivier and Joan Fontaine play a young couple who moved to an old mansion. Almost the first hour of the film we are shown a domestic romantic story about unequal marriage, and a man who is experiencing the death of his beloved woman. Someone will like it, someone will not, but the fact remains - the first hour of the film is just the so-called introduction (getting to know the characters, if you want). And the main plot begins somewhere in the 60th minute of the film.

And what is happening in the second half of the film is truly surprising. Multiple unexpected plot twists, the discovery of new, previously undisclosed secrets and all the like. In this part, the Hitchcock's style nevertheless shows itself, and we can again enjoy some of the detective story.

Rebecca is a rather atypical film for Hitchcock, which nonetheless can please with an excellent romantic atmosphere, with a dashing detective at the end of the film. Of course, unexpected ending attached.

Video credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2ydTbUJ__8