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Alfred Hitchcock Intro: Part 1
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Alfred Hitchcock: Intro part 1
from David Thomsen's "Murder and the Movies"
Alfred Hitchcock: Childhood
Born in unfashionable Leystonstone to the east of London in 1899.
Son of a greengrocer (a person who works in or owns a store that sells fresh vegetables and fruit).
Family lived in an apartment above the shop.
Early Years
Early Hitchcock
Factoids 1
They were never poor, but they went into London to earn a better living.
His mother Agatha was the daughter of Frederick Miller, an American stockbroker, who had moved to England.
She was born in Torquay in Devon, a seaside resort for the rich, and she grew up there in a fine villa, in comfort and happiness - that was in her own words.
Alfred Hitchcock: Early Years
Factoids 2
Alfred was not unhappy but he was never sure of himself.
He was a lonely boy, a devout Catholic, famously afraid of getting into trouble.
In the time of the Great War (WWI), he was classified C3, which meant he was only fit for sedentary work (office work, sitting). He was overweight and unathletic.
Early Life
Wife: Alma
Hitchcock could not think of himself as attractive, and he remembered having no friends.
He grew up alone in the room of his own watchfulness.
Hitchcock finished official schooling by the age of 15.
He did night classes, studying engineering, and that improved his talent for drawing plans, forms, and shapes in space.
He met Alma Reville when they were both working in the British film industry, and Alma was a little ahead of Alfred as a scriptwriter.
They would marry and have a daughter, born in 1928.
Alma became a vital aide and adviser to Alfred.
Early Life/Marriage
That is the core of his astonishing art: he was a confirmed planner, and he would become famous for movies haunted by suspenseful spaces derived from his meticulous (detailed) storyboards.
He liked things in order.
Hitchcock's Complicated Relationship....
Complicated Relationship
It is a question as to how Alma accommodated Alfred’s intense gaze in movies for pretty women and enchanting actresses.
He adored Ingrid Bergman, and watching her (they made 3 films together).
No evidence suggests he cheated on his wife.
Early Influences
Hitchcock began to make films in the silent era when visual design was more obviously important than it is now.
He was drawn to thrillers or mystery films.
He was a student of the films Fritz Lang was making in Germany - he copied shots and situations from Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922).
Early Influences
Early Influences
Germany was set on its grim destiny (Nazis).
Hitch was operating in the cheery culture of England.
Movies typically showed murders via offstage violence.
It was in response to censorship, and part of a general sensibility in those English days that violence should not be a present or central reality.
Many movies did not include murders.
So killings were done discreetly, quickly, and politely - to be offensive or forcefully real could endanger the loyalty of the audience and its wish to keep such urges repressed.
There was a tension in that secrecy, and Hitch struggled with it all his life. Sometimes such smothered conflict can make a person murderous.
So there are murders in early Hitchcock.