Alfred Hitchcock was a successful auteur who mainly focussed on classical suspense and thriller movies such as; “Rear Window” and “Shadow of a Doubt”. The word “auteur” is the French word for the English term “author”, but has a more specific meaning. An auteur is a director who has a distinctive style, or “feel”. An auteur puts his own personal stamp on each film and has sufficient control over his work, pre, during and post production, so he can truly be considered as the author of the film. The movies, “Rear Window” and “Shadow of a Doubt”, focus on the concepts of food and death, voyeurism and doubleness. Hitchcock’s cinematography, particularly the mis-en-scene and his use of techniques such as motifs and the McGuffin, they convey many hints to the audience and the character about the plot to reveal important aspects.
Alfred Hitchcock’s use of
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The Mcguffin is an object or device in a film or a book which serves merely as a trigger for the plot, meaning it misleads the characters and the audience. In “Rear window” it is the dog digging in the flower bed. The dog digging in the same spot is a reoccurring image which draws the attention of both the audience and Jefferies. When the dog is found dead, everyone in the neighbourhood comes out to check but Thornwald, who is suspected of killing his wife, does not come out. Later in the movie Stella, played by Thelma Ritter, and Lisa, played by Grace Kelly, go out to check on that exact spot where the dog was digging but nothing was found. The audience and Jefferies have been tricked into believing that something is hidden there but nothing is actually found. The McGuffin in “The Shadow of the Doubt” is the scene when two detectives visit young Charlie and tell her that the murderer has died in an aeroplane accident. That man had the same initials as Uncle Charlie, which is Hitchcock misleading the audience into believing that the man is actually
In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock has a way of throwing clues in the face of the spectator, yet still allows some room for the spectator to find their own less obvious details. In the same museum scene, Hitchcock shows the viewer exactly what he wants them to see. In a sense, Hitchcock can be very manipulative with the camera. The audience sees the picture containing the women with a curl in her hair holding flowers, and then the direct connection is made by the camera, by showing the curl in Madeline’s hair, and the flowers sitting next to her. The spectator is led to believe that they have solved the mystery and she is truly possessed by the women in the picture. However, Hitchcock does this on purpose to lead the audience away from the truth that she is only acting. It is for these reasons that Hitchcock’s work at an auteur adds a level of depth and intrigue.
Rear Window effectively demonstrates Hitchcock’s strong qualities as an author. The writer for Rear Window is not Hitchcock, and yet there are clearly many motifs and themes present which are well known for being used by Hitchcock. He is not merely following instructions on how to make the movie; he is providing his own creative adjustments. Now we will address a few of these from the film. First, drawing parallels between characters with a difference, usually a negative one, is a repeated concept in Hitchcock films.
...ormation of novel to film, sees Hitchcock’s responsibility as auteur. Suggesting Hitchcock as ‘creator’, attributes to Vertigo’s “perfection” (Wood, p.129) as Wood argues. Stylistic features known classically to Alfred Hitchcock movies is also what defines Hitchcock as a classic auteur, his style generates a cinematic effect which mixes effectively with his use of suspense. In returning to Cook’s discussion, she references Andrew Sarris, who argues that the “history of American cinema could be written in terms of its great directors,” (Cook, p. 411) showing the legitimacy of authorship in popular American cinema. Ultimately Cook goes on to address the changes in authorship from the 1950’s until today, featuring developments in authorship within Cinema. Overall, both Cook and Wood presented a balanced discussion on the legitimacy of Alfred Hitchcock’s auteur status.
...m plays a considerable role in this film. Jeffries, the films protagonist is bound to his apartment, so for entertainment he watches people through his window without them knowing. From the very beginning these characters seem to so interesting, so no wonder Jeffries decides to watch them. While watching the film, we become witnesses of their private lives, making us voyeurists too. In this film windows are not used in a traditional sense, they expose people, they symbolize confinement, and they allude to suspenseful plot devices. Hitchcock’s aesthetic configuration of the film manipulates the audience into questioning several aspects of the film and in life in general. Hitchcock’s originality in Rear Window was not only successful during the golden age of Hollywood, but it continues to be creatively adapted and consistently influential in today’s cinema as well.
Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt is a true masterpiece. Hitchcock brings the perfect mix of horror, suspense, and drama to a small American town. One of the scenes that exemplifies his masterful style takes place in a bar between the two main characters, Charlie Newton and her uncle Charlie. Hitchcock was quoted as saying that Shadow of a Doubt, “brought murder and violence back in the home, where it rightly belongs.” This quote, although humorous, reaffirms the main theme of the film: we find evil in the places we least expect it. Through careful analysis of the bar scene, we see how Hitchcock underlies and reinforces this theme through the setting, camera angles, and lighting.
One major attribute in Hitchcock films is how creatively Hitchcock tricks the audience about the fate of the characters and the sequence of events. Many people argue that it is a tactic by Hitchcock to surprise his audience in order to increase the suspense of the movie. For example, in Shadow of a Doubt, the audience assumes that young Charlie is an innocent young girl who loves her uncle dearly. However as the movie progresses, Young Charlie is not as innocent as the audience suspects. Young Charlie, once a guiltless child, ends up killing her evil uncle. In Vertigo, the same Hitchcock trickery takes place. In the beginning, the audience has the impression that the Blond women is possessed by another woman who is trying to kill her. The audience also has the notion that the detective is a happy man who will solve the murder case correctly. Just before the movie ends, the audience realizes that the detective was specifically hired by a man to kill his wife. The detective, in the end, seems to be the hopeless, sad victim.
Rear Window and the works of Hopper are both required with confinement. Disregarding its blended utilize land setting, Early Sunday Morning does not pass on a warm, fluffy feeling of group. In like manner, in Rear Window, the inhabitants of the lofts are confined from each other. Apartment Houses is additionally for the most part viewed as another antecedent to Rear Window. Large portions of Hopper's night settings portray scenes from New York City and Night Windows is no special case. The lady in this work of art is totally unconscious of the stage she is on and the front line situate its eyewitness involves. Its semi-sexual story is resounded in Rear Window, and it catches strikingly the experience of living in New York: the a large number
An inner courtyard becomes a large stage that serves the director to show a portrait of human relationships. Angles and perspectives put the audience in a place where it is not normally found. Hitchcock with his camera can get in someone's personal life and invade their privacy. With Rear Window it makes the public more aware of itself as an observer. This displaces and transforms the public into a player into the action since across his look, the observer assumes the responsibility of the characters and believes an experience different from any other film of their
Shadow of a Doubt is an Alfred Hitchcock film that was shot on location in the 1940's town of Santa Rosa, California. The town itself is representative of the ideal of American society. However, hidden within this picturesque community dark corruption threatens to engulf a family. The tale revolves around Uncle Charlie, a psychotic killer whose namesake niece, a teenager girl named Charlie, is emotionally thrilled by her Uncles arrival. However her opinion slowly changes as she probes into her mysterious uncle. In the film, director/producer Alfred Hitchcock blends conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.
There are four crucial scenes of this film in which Hitchcock shows a change in perspective and identity through the mise-en-scène. Hitchcock’s signature motifs, style, and themes are conveyed through the mise-en-scène.
In Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock utilizes and stretches the ambiguous line between comedy and suspense by utilizing smaller characters in the film to keep the story line moving, and to help break sequence or rhythm of what the audience had been perceiving at the time. Many of the minor characters were used as “fillers”, such as the waitress in the bar when Uncle Charlie and Charlie are sitting in the bar, and makes the comment “I would die for a ring like this”; or the quiet, gentle neighbor Herb who is fascinated with the process of homicide and murder. It brings to the audience an immediate comic relief, but similar to all of Hitchcock, leaves an unsettling feeling of fear and suspense with the viewer. Shadow of a Doubt is a film that hits very close to home for me, primarily because of the small town feel very similar to Orono that I have grown to know so well. There is a brutal irony that lurks through the film, especially during the time period that the film was made. The picturesque stereotype of small town life in the 40’s is brutally torn apart by Hitchcock wit and creative ingénue, putting the viewer in an uncomfortable mind stretch of reality.
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
According to Baudry, the “cinematic apparatus” is the idea of how isolation from the outside world (darkened room, no outside noise, etc.) and being exposed to reproduced reality through a screen gives the viewer the notion that what they are seeing is real and they are experiencing it themselves, much like in a dream. Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Baudry’s “cinematic apparatus” theory hold hands in many different elements, but I will be discussing one of those elements, which is how Rear Window’s main character, Jeff, is a representation of this theory. In the movie, Jeff looks out his window and he can see his neighbors’ day-to-day life. Using the windows, the binoculars and the telephoto lens on his camera to spy on his neighbors, Jeff’s view is
“But what if someone really good made a horror picture?” Hitchcock, released in 2012 is a biopic of the proclaimed master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins), and the making of his film Psycho. The biopic follows the trials and tribulations of Alfred Hitchcock. The director, Sacha Gervasi also shows the developing relationship between Hitchcock and his wife Alma (Helen Mirren), and though they encounter more setbacks; including jealousy between Alma and Janet (Scarlett Johansson) and trust, they eventually were able to produce a suspense masterpiece. Hitchcock overall conforms to any die-hard fan of Hitchcock and his films.