Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock

 

In his 60, Hitchcock forced to gamble his Bel-Air home to make “Psycho", a film which he believed in and willing to take a risk . A film that the studio excecutive and his agent in that time called “ A cheap horror movie” but his wife Alma, supported him all the way. If you are going to see the new film “ Hitchcock” then you will know about this story.

Alfred Hitchcock. One of the greatest film director. Every film fan will agreed with it. He pioneered many film making techniques – the dolly zoom – you can see this camera movement in a a few classic Hitchcock movies like Vertigo and many Steven Spielberg's and Brian de Palma’s films. He also been called the master of suspense, he was a talented director of psychological thriller genres. If you are Hitchcock fan then you will know about his interview with François Truffaut, and you will know his  obession for blondes and his film is almost always about an innocent person gets involved with trouble. There are so many things I want to write about Him and because I want  to make a thriller, so I am trying to understand what drove him, what is his visions and how he works with actors?  Hitchcock once said:

I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'

There are many actors out there, they think they are good actors, I have no doubt about it.  But I think the best actors are the actors who can do what ever the director need, they can cry and laugh or be angry or sad or all at the same time and let the director to choose the one expression he wants. 

Actors are like emotion supermarket and the best actor is the one that accepted by the audience. Being film director is a difficult  job,  one must deal with everything about the film and also has to worry about his own sanity. Will the audience like my movie? what to do to stay on the budget ? how to make a cheap horror movie into a classic thriller? I think we should go back to watch all Hitchcock movies, either you are the actors or the directors, we should learn a thing or two. To me the best thing that Hitchcock really did well is his timing, when it should be slow he made it slow and intimate, when it needed to be exciting he edited the film tight enough to captured all your attention. Unlike most movie these days, the director always thinks quick editing means excitement but audience saw nothing but flash. I think we should blame it on Music Video. 

Hitchcock: If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

If you like a Hitchcock movie, you will also fall in love with "The Third man".
The director is Carol Reed, shot in 1949 - and this is a must see for Black and white lover, the photography staggered light and shadow , influenced the history of cinema, and the director also boldly used only one  musical instrumentent  "Zither" for the entire film. 

Director needs to be bold and Actor needs to listen to directors and beleive in him  and  most importantly we all need a family like Alma.