Pragmmatic question

Which of Alfred Hitchcock's trademarks makes him a unique auteur?


Slide 1: Still Image of Alfred Hitchcock, with text above saying "Alfred Hitchcock, by Paige Overton"

Speech: I've chosen to look at Alfred Hitchcock and how his trademarks in his films make him a unique auteur and different from others. I've chosen this because Hitchcock’s is known for his remarkable trademarks, which make him stand out from the others.

Slide 2: Title: Problematic text on slide: I have chosen Alfred Hitchcock as my auteur to discuss, alongside Psycho as my focus film. I have chosen to prove that Hitchcock’s trademarks that run throughout his films make him an outstanding and unique auteur. Especially in comparison to other auteur's who yes have some small trademarks, but non as remarkable as Hitchcock’s, for example Tim Burton. I have chosen to compare Hitchcock to two other auteur's. I will be doing this by analysing 3 scenes from Hitchcock’s film 'Psycho' and one scene from two different films directed by the auteur of my choice.

No still images on this slide. 

Speech: This slide is to tell you what exactly I'm going to be doing in the project. I have chosen to do Alfred Hitchcock as my auteur as I feel he has really had a huge impact on the film industry today. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't truly know what its like to be thrilled by a thriller. After all all the classic horror films that we know and love today, most of them have been inspired by the famous Psycho. I feel that he and his films are a great way to show how unique his style of filming was.

Slide 3: Text on slide: Title: Trademarks

Text:  One of Hitchcock’s most famous trademarks is the Macguffin. Macguffin is a plot element that catches the viewers attention, or usually known as a red herring. Alfred Hitchcock invented this himself, and it plays a huge part of a lot of his films. His most famous one being Psycho.

Speech: Read paragraph above. A great film to compare some of Hitchcock's MacGuffin trademarks is Sixth Sense. Throughout the film itself the Macguffin is the actual actor. He is made to make the audience think he is alive, and well, however at the end there is a total twist and we found he has been dead the whole time. This gives a total twist on the plot, and the director the whole time has had us thinking different. 

Video: Clip from the film Psycho with the MacGuffin in. The short snippet is a scene where the lead lady (Marion Crane) is about to take a shower, and the killer Norman Bates is spying on her through a peephole in the wall next door. The camera focuses on a wod of money, which is the MacGuffin, and makes the audience think something else is going on. (Item number 1 taken from www.youtube.com)  

Still Images: Money from the film Psycho (Item number 2, image from search engine Google)

Slide 4: Text on slide - Title: Trademarks

Text: Hitchcock loves using blonde women in his films, he chose beautiful women not only for a sexual desire to men, but so that the woman in the audience would instantly like her. He said that because 3/4 of the audience are female. This played a huge part in his films and there was always an innocent heroine, which would make the audience feel for her and be more involved with the film.
One directer which is very similar to Hitchcock is Brian De Palma, but his one particular film 'Blow Out' has many of Hitchcock's trademarks. Quoted from www.deepfocusreview.com "Under these surface elements, however, resides an exploration into the power of filmmaking and what sound and image can reveal—or conceal—when cut and spliced together. De Palma, a director whose films are relentlessly linked to those of Alfred Hitchcock, has been accused of imitating the cinematic grammar of Hitchcock and other directors. And though De Palma’s signatures are often undeniably Hitchcockian in their intertextuality and polish, with Blow Out he goes beyond Hitchcock’s model and puts forth his own integrated obsessions, which, present throughout his career as the defining signifier of his originality and importance as an auteur, demand an investigation of cinema itself. "

Speech: Read above paragraph

Still Images: 4 Images of blonde female actresses that starred in Hitchcock’s films. These are Janet Leigh, Grace Kelly, Madeleine Carroll and Cary Grant. (Items number 3,4,5 & 6 taken from http://seabastian.hubpages.com/hub/Hitchcock-Blondes-Cool-Platinum-and-Daring) 

(item number 7 taken from http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/blowout.asp)

Slide 5: Title: Focus Film

Speech: My focus film that I have chosen to study is Psycho. This is my favourite Hitchcock film because everything in the film is put together so well, and it really has your mind thinking about the plot. Now in the 21st century the film isn't so scary, however when it was first released it was of the most spine chilling films of its time. It may not be so scary to some people today but it defiantly still has its shocking scenes.

Text on screen: Psycho is a pretty basic film, yet with the clever use of editing it was made to be one of the most mind twisting films of the 60s. The plot is about a young woman who steals $40,000 from her employers client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother. As simple the plot may sound, the way Hitchcock portrayed  the film he has the audience thinking the plot was something was totally different. He had the idea, less is more.

Still Images: Psycho Poster (Item 8, taken from http://www.movieforum.com/movies/titles/psycho/poster.shtml)

Slide 6: Text on slide: Title - Trademarks and focus film

Text: Its all good talking about trademarks, and talking about the focus film, but its when you intertwine them when it becomes complicated. Hitchcock's trademarks are constantly running throughout his films, and hwy his films are so in depth and creative. In Psycho, he also used Janet Leigh as a MacGuffin, we though she was the leading lady. Not only this but she was a famous blonde trademark. But then we come to realize once she has been murdered, its her sister that becomes the leading lady who is also blonde haired, here we have 2 trademarks without much effort put in what so ever. For my 3 slides I will be analysing 3 scenes for my focus film Psycho.

Slide 7: Text on slide: The first scene I will be analysing is the opening scene from Psycho. At the start of the scene there is a high angle shot above the city of Phoenix, with a camera panning across to the left. The camera moves and focuses on a hotel. It slowly zooms on to a particular window and goes inside. Here we find a man stood by a bed with a blonde haired woman laying on the bed in nothing but her underwear. Straight away we spot one of Hitchcock’s trademarks, blonde women. He’s chosen a sexy, pure faced lady for this part. Not only this, at the time of the release of the film, a women to be shown in her underwear would be outrageous, here Hitchcock is breaking boundaries which made his films so well known.

Speech: Read the above paragraph 

No still images on this slide

Slide 8: Text on slide:  The next slide which I shall be analysing Psycho’s most famous scene, the well-known Shower Scene. In this scene it is the first killing of the film, and to this day is one of the most re-created scenes of all time. With 70 different stabbing shots and the most recognisable music, Hitchcock created something never seen before, but started off a world trend. The scene starts off with our first victim Marion undressing in her motel room and getting into the shower. We see her grab the soap and wash different parts of her body, with careful editing you see nothing but image everything. The cameras is then placed on the wall of the shower using a mid shot so we can see from Marion’s shoulders up while she washes. We can also see the shower curtain, which is relatively transparent, which automatically creates a tense mood for the audience as hints are thrown that something could come behind the shower curtain.

Speech: This is hinted as Marion is only in one third of the camera shot and that is at the far right, leaving two thirds of empty space. Behind her we then see a dark shadow which slowly comes closer and closer to the shower, as it comes closer a slow zoom becomes obvious and we begin to see a human shape behind the curtain. Meanwhile Marion is blissfully unaware anything is happening. The killer pulls back the curtain at the speed of light and raises a knife. With the use of special lighting we can only see a shower of the person and at this point we are only left to use our imagination whom it may be. The camera cuts to Marion as she screams at the same time of a piercing music is played in the background. Its probably the use of the ear piercing music which really creates the climax here in this scene. We then see a knife stabbing various parts of the body, but we never actually see it enter her. We see a shot of Marion’s feet with only red water running beneath her, and without having to show anything graphic Hitchcock has helped the audience understand she has been stabbed. We see the back of the killer leave the room and Marion falls to the fall and using a slow rotating zooming pan we focus on Marion’s dead eyeball.

Still images: picture of Marion dead on the floor (item number 9, taken from search engine Google)

Slide 9: Text on screen: Title: Final Analysis from focus film. The final scene is probably the most thrilling end to the film that Hitchcock could of done. Like the rest of the film it’s not that complicated and its not filled with blood, guts and gore. The start of the scene we are at the police station with a psychiatrist and he talks about Norman Bates and what he’s being saying. They come to the conclusion that he is mentally ill, and because he loved his mother so much, when she died he did not want her to leave him, so he has preserved her body and pretends to be her. This is so that she can always be with him. However she didn’t like other women being in her sons life, the same way he didn’t like other men being in her life. So when another female comes into his life, he will dress up as his mother and kill the woman, or man who trespasses. At the police station we see an officer stood outside a room guarding it. Another officer approaches the room with a blanket and enters it.

Speech: We don’t see anything in the room all we hear is an old woman inside talking to the officer and thanking him for the blanker. At this point by using this sound Hitchcock is fooling the audience by making them think a woman is in the room, however after we see the psychiatrist talking we see that the ‘woman’ in the room happens to be Norman Bates. This is strange to the audience and can be spine chilling to some of them as they don’t expect it, and at the time of the release of the film it would have been seen weird for a man to dress and speak as a woman the way Norman does. Not only this, but a question of Normans sexuality is raised about what’s he’s doing and because of it.

Still Images: Norman Bates (Item 10, taken from http://characters.wikia.com/wiki/Norman_Bates)

Slide 10: text on screen: title: The City of Dead

Speech:

• I have chosen to analyse the city of dead to not only prove but also disprove my problematic, that Alfred Hitchcock’s trademarks in his films are totally unique to any other auteur films.
• Directed by John Moxey
• I’ve chosen ‘The Burning Scene’ as the one to analyse.
• The scene starts off with a bunch of men and women with fire approaching a small bonfire, the look on one mans face isn’t happy.
• The group approach a house and pull out a woman; this woman is a pretty faced but has dark hair.
• In comparison to Hitchcock who uses mostly blonde women throughout his films. She is dragged over to a pole and it tied up to it in a vicious way. At this point she is screaming and shouting, and you feel ever so tense.
• Noise isn’t that high pitch and scary, not many establish shots like Hitchcock
• Not feeling very tense
• No Mcguffin to mislead you on the plot
• With no remorse they set her on fire and we see her burn to death

Text on screen: like psycho we see her die, unlike psycho not many shots to create a tense mood

Videos: This video is a small snippet that I analysed to get my comparisons to Psycho (Item number 11, taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6nr1PfDDh8)

Slide 11: text on screen Halloween

• Directed by John Carpenter
• Slow pan similar to Hitchcock
• Detective
• Using 1 third of screen to show female actress
• She has dark hair
• Not that attractive
• Mid angle shot (Hitchcock likes to use high angle)
• Killer shadow in background
• Slowly comes closer
• Expand on all of above

Images:  Halloween poster taken from search engine Google (item number 11)

Slide 12: text on  screen: conclusion:

So as you can see just looking at the different film and different scenes Psycho has on going similarities, not only Psycho but also all Hitchcock’s films. His main one being blonde haired women. Not many people now used blonde haired woman as their leading ladies, but Hitchcock for some reason loved them

Talk about:

·        McGuffin

·        Shots

·        Woman

·        Choice of location

·        Effects for their time and era

·        Why I think Psycho works so well in comparison to the others

·        Do these prove or disprove my problematic?