Hitchcock Film Techniques

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My Thesis aims at observing the suspense and fear showed through themes and techniques in films directed by Alfred Hitchcock’s movies Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Wrong Man, and The Man Who Knew To Much. He controlled when the audience felt certain emotions by filming with different camera cuts, close ups, different camera angles, contrasting between light to dark scenes, and adding certain music to different scenes.
A unique feature for the movie Dial M for Murder is that it is made known to the viewers who the murderer is and what his plan is. Despite that, the film still remains very suspenseful. This is mainly because of the innovative camera angles and the pans and zooms, which prove extremely effective in putting an importance on particular aspects of the scene. The lighting effects used in the film together with the thrilling background music helps the camera effects in maintaining suspense.
For example, in the scene where Margot gets attacked and her hand stumbles on the scissors, the scissors are deliberately kept towards the camera that is right in front of her head. By placing the scissors right in front of the camera, Alfred Hitchcock has tried to create a sense of foreground in the movie as well, and placed the weapon of murder, which is an important object from the story’s point of view, there.
The scene in which Margot gets attacked, clever lighting effects are effectively employed by Alfred Hitchcock, to build up the anticipation of the audience and add-on greatly to the element of suspense and thrill present in the scene. It is noticeable how the entire set is dark and only some parts are selectively lit in order to capture audience focus. For example, the scene in which the doorknob turns slowly and the ...

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...acter of Manny as a religious, moral and selfless, simple guy in the minds of the audience quite well. This is further corroborated when towards the end, when the actual culprit gets caught and is confronted by Manny, the first things that he says to him is about the suffering that is caused to Rose because of him. Through this characterization, Alfred Hitchcock also is able to establish an element of irony in the movie, that such a simpleton should be convicted as a criminal. In this movie he deviates from his usual genre of suspense and nail-biting thrill and takes on a more dramatic subject.
The camera techniques and various other lighting and sound effects used are carefully selected in order to portray the apt emotion in the right amount, without overdoing any of it. Alfred Hitchcock loved to show the emotion of fear along with lots of suspense in his films.

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