I saw North by Northwest when I was a kid, and I remember the excitement of not knowing what was around every bend. The idea that the most extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people is the drive behind why I started writing. But there's so much more to Hitchcock than just storytelling. There's an entire visual language he introduced to help those stories resonate with the audience. Check out this video essay from The Discarded Image, and let's talk more after the jump. How Alfred Hitchcock Used Visionary Cinematic Language to Tell His Stories The cinematography in Hitchcock movies should be talked about when mentioning the bedrock of visual language in modern cinema. One of the things I feel like we don't talk enough about is how Hitchcock developed an auteur language that never really changed from the early 1930s until the 1970s. His auteur touch would expand and mirror itself from movie to movie, but he always was working with significant tools to capture the audience's attention. For this reason, many see Hitchcock as arguably the most important pioneer of the cinematic language. The video above analyzed films such as Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Notorious, Topaz, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Shadow of a Doubt to make the point, but I wanted to look at a few highlights. These are the things we call "Hitchcockian" now. Things like his focus on his characters' eyes, editing techniques, like the ones he used...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Tuesday, 20 August, 2024