CHAPTER 10 - Three Elements of Hitchcock

The drastic transformation in the cinema industry during the ’60s, in so many ways, had delayed Hitchcock's films’ true artfulness and elements of pure cinema to be fully appreciated by the viewers and critics.

So much so that one of his best works, Vertigo (1958) a story about a past trauma and psychosis, wasn't considered to be anything special until its re-release in 1983. Today it’s not only named Hitchcock's masterpiece by the cinematic community but also at the time claimed the throne of ”Greatest Films of All Time" from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

One of the aspects that made Hitchcock’s work so unique was the use the camera as an extension of himself. It fetishized, expressed and focused on its interests in the same way a human would, which wasn't common at the time.

“If you can think you can hide what your prurient or your noble interests are in your work as a film director, you’re nuts! And he was one of the first guys that just said: ‘I'm gonna go with it, I gotta be me.’” says David Fincher about Hitchcock’s work.

Second… He was a true master of self-promotion. Hitchcock is one of the earliest to instinctively understand the power of branding. He embraced television appearances, put himself in his own movie trailers, made cameos and posed with the stars during set breaks.

“He created a comedic persona and created a name recognized and marketable, therefore every generation will encounter Alfred Hitchcock” as Ingo Kammerer points out.

But the most fascinating part of Hitchcock’s work was the way he designs his narrative, and how the audience engages with it. A neuroscientist, Uri Hasson, who studies the brain activities of subjects while they’re watching Hitchcock films, puts this in a scientific way:

“Hitchcock style of cinema is an experiment on the audience. He leads you to one place, then surprises you and take a turn; then he builds you up again and let it go. He doesn’t leave any area of freedom to the audience. The brains of the audience are constantly stimulated. It’s like a machine that forces you from one state to the other and take control of your brain and align it with the movie in a very powerful and complicated way.”