By Quinn Topper Marcus

I remember first being introduced to Alfred Hitchcock’s work as a kid. I remember my parents describing his movies as “the director who always puts a twist in there somewhere.” I recall enjoying North by Northwest, Psycho, and Rear Window (the three I started with) but I never returned to them for years and largely set them aside in my head. I was only 10 or so at the time and I don’t think I could fully grasp the effect Hitchcock had on cinema as a whole. However, now that I’m 17, with a much more expansive palette of films, read the interviews, and discussed and analyzed his movies, I think I better understand and admire Hitchcock’s body of work.

I certainly believe in Truffaut’s statement that Hitchcock intensified cinema. I think coming to terms with that requires one to be well-viewed in terms of movie watching. There are so many obvious ways that Hitchcock set trends and genre conventions for horror movies, thrillers, mysteries, and action films. His influence on cinema is impossible to ignore and so many filmmakers today have made attempts to emulate his style; Martin Scorsese once even said in an interview that he took massive inspiration from Hitchcock’s work. I like the idea that Hitchcock and Truffaut briefly touched upon in their interview that Hitchcock wasn’t necessarily just remaking the same movie over and over, but rather trying to decipher a specific theme throughout several movies. With that in mind, one could connect the majority of Hitchcock’s works; obsessed with sex, love, death, murder, justice, and sometimes the synergy of all five.

Perhaps that’s what Truffaut is getting at when he says Hitchcock intensified life as well. Hitchcock persisted in his exploration of his favorite themes, conveying a twisted worldview, his distrust in law enforcement, and his conflating of sex and death to be the same. He was trying to tell his audience something about the way he perceived life. A more literal interpretation of Truffaut’s statement would probably touch upon Hitchcock’s impact as a person and as an entertainer in the eyes of the public. There is value in this interpretation, as Hitchcock had an impact on many people in his life, inspired other filmmakers, and continues to make his presence known throughout the history of film. However, I think Hitchcock intensified life by putting the audience in his shoes, in telling these stories that fascinated him, that he was drawn to because in some way he connected to the material. He wanted to toy with the audience, play with their minds, manipulate them into thinking one person’s a hero, and then redefining the term ‘hero’ altogether. Or, getting audiences to identify with a killer, to very briefly root for someone as evil as Norman Bates.

Hitchcock’s filmography could be seen as one massive psychological test of his audiences’ humanity, of the deepest, darkest desires he believes are within all of us. Maybe not, perhaps all of it was a practical joke. Hitchcock mentioned plenty of times that he loved practical jokes, so maybe his movies were just a bit of irony, and the punchline was always the audience's reaction. Either way, Hitchcock opened up new doors for cinema, and put his perspective of life in the spotlight, intensifying both life and cinema along the way. As for his most monumental or memorable achievements, I think there are multiple that deserve that title.

The most obvious for me has to be Vertigo, which I believe to be his finest work. Vertigo stands apart from the rest of his filmography as his most stunning thematic and structural work, featuring what might be James Stewart’s best performance of his career. I feel as though Hitchcock’s entire mission as a filmmaker culminated with this film. The film features Hitchcock’s most hypnotic visual storytelling, conveying themes of longing, obsession, loss, and the male gaze. I felt myself transfixed to the screen the whole time and was taken on Hitchcock’s most twisted journey of audience identification, featuring a hard-hitting reveal roughly halfway through. The way Vertigo’s structure and Jimmy Stewart’s performance complement each other to tell this tragic narrative of a man spiraling into obsession over a woman is so well constructed, and easily elevates Vertigo to what is likely my personal favorite of his works.

Rope speaks to Hitchcock’s mastery of the camera. Here, Hitchcock is fully experimenting with the idea of the ‘perfect murder,’ taking a very theatrical and confidently poised approach to shooting this film. He lets the actors do their excellent work, and gradually slithers the camera throughout the film, letting the tension build to what is Hitchcock’s most riveting climax; the confrontation between Jimmy Stewart’s character and the killers. The film is a flawless example of Hitchcock’s skill as a filmmaker. He makes his presence known with the camera, turning the camera into something of a character itself, a fly on the wall that’s purely there to observe the suspense.

Rear Window, yet another Stewart-Hitchcock collaboration, sees Hitchcock’s most critical examination of his role as a director and a filmmaker. He explores the most voyeuristic tendencies of directing and the act of observing people in general, examining humans’ inner tendencies to pry into the lives of others. The work could be seen as Hitchcock’s most meta, as one reading sees him using Stewart’s character as an extension of himself as a filmmaker, drawn to the bizarre, to crime, killings, women, and the lives of everyday people.

Psycho is another easy candidate for Hitchcock’s strongest achievements, serving (next to Vertigo) as his darkest film. Norman Bates, arguably the most terrifying villain of Hitchcock’s whole filmography, already gives Psycho the edge over many of Hitchcock’s works. However, Psycho is also perhaps the best example of Hitchcock’s toying with the audience. He effectively turned the audience into a character in the film, forced to identify with multiple people throughout the movie, including Norman Bates himself right after the famous ‘shower murder’ scene. The use of perspective in Psycho is marvelous, both times I watched it, the signature twist of Janet Leigh’s death remained effective, and her murder remains one of the best-directed sequences of Hitchcock’s career. The camerawork and editing are gorgeous in Psycho as well, both of which are deliberately crafted to obscure the mystery of Norman Bates’ identity from the audience, and the results are stunning to watch.

Lifeboat is a massively underrated Hitchcock film, providing one of his more theatrical works that uses its premise to explore human nature brilliantly. The central concept of having a group of survivors stranded in a lifeboat, most of which are American or British, forced to rely on the most qualified member of the boat: a German, makes for some very intense scenes. The film was released during WWII, and seeing members of the Allied forces placing their trust and survival in a German’s hands (who ultimately does betray them) was riveting to watch. The film acts almost as an experiment, one that decodes just how far people are willing to trust one another, and what humans will do to each other to survive. I’d say it ranks amongst Hitchcock’s major achievements for its simplicity. The film is certainly the tightest film Hitchcock has made; both in pacing and runtime. Lifeboat also manages to get the best ensemble work from a cast out of any of Hitchcock’s movies. There isn’t a weak link in the cast, and it's a nice step forward for Hitchcock to see him cast what was his first major African-American role with Canada Lee. The German man played by Walter Slezak is also one of Hitchcock’s most deceptively evil villains. The wildest aspect of his character is that American audiences were watching allied forces teaming up with a German to survive, a premise that must have been mind-boggling to experience at the time.

One more underrated Hitchcock film I’d consider an achievement is The Lady Vanishes, which has slowly crawled its way up my list of favorites. The final film of Hitchcock’s British period, The Lady Vanishes is Hitchcock’s best representation of what he meant when he said movies are “slices of cake.” With its release in 1938, England was on the brink of war, and the film served as an ominous telling for what was to come. The Lady Vanishes is almost a warning sign of a film, drenched in this subtle paranoia about the war to come. However, Hitchcock somehow manages to produce what is his most heartfelt and spirited adventure. There’s something oddly whimsical about the film, as the central romance between Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave is played as if two children are out to investigate a crime scene. There’s so much humor and joy put into the film, and as Hitchcock was beginning to get older, one can’t help but feel as if The Lady Vanishes served as his personal goodbye to youth. Here, Hitchcock says farewell to young love, and the feeling of fantasy, ecstatic happiness, and the wide-eyed passion that comes with it. He also parts ways with British cinema’s charm and whimsy, getting the most out of his signature comedic style with his characters, particularly the duo of Charters and Caldicott. The Lady Vanishes is such a colorful project from Hitchcock, emotionally, and thematically, seamlessly blending the dread of a coming war with this strange mystery on board a train. I consider it one of Hitchcock’s finest works for how much it signifies childlike delight for the art form of cinema, giving the audience a true “slice of cake” of a Hitchcock film.

I could name many more of Hitchcock’s films that hold significance in his vast body of work, these five are just a piece of what he managed to accomplish throughout his career. Of course, not all of his films are perfect, but to make a statement that all he did was remake the same project over and over would be overlooking the fundamental versatility of Hitchcock as a director. He touched so many different genres throughout his career, made anti-war films, horror films, espionage thrillers, mysteries of all kinds, twisted romances, comedies, the list goes on and on. During this class, my appreciation for his style and impact on cinema has grown immensely, and I do believe that Hitchcock’s filmography deserves special recognition in the history and evolution of film as an art form.

One memory I hold close to my heart from my experiences with Hitchcock was my first viewing of North by Northwest. I was around 10 at the time, and I remember being thoroughly entertained by the film, but also greatly inspired. North by Northwest was one of the films that got me into cinema in the first place. The scene where Cary Grant runs for his life from an actual plane, opening fire on him in an open field as he darts for cover in a nearby cornfield was one of the most memorable and critical sequences that developed my love for the movies. As I watched works of Hitchcock’s I’d never seen, and rewatched ones I saw long ago, I once again felt that same undeniable passion and hunger to make something as powerful and striking as that.