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Filming Tricks Alfred Hitchcock Employed with his Classic MoviesAlfred Joseph Hitchcock was a genius. His contribution to the world of cinema is unparalleled within the genre of the suspense thriller, which he is responsible in part for defining. Here is an examination of Hitchcock's philosophies about film making, and some of the formulas which he developed over the course of his 53 films.
He firmly believed that the world was not a safe place to live in. Terrible things happen to ordinary people every day - even in broad daylight - and we are powerless to do anything about it. The evil in mankind can rear its ugly head at almost any time, regardless of where you are. No one is immune, and there is no such thing as an "innocent man." To Hitchcock, everybody is guilty of something. Everyone has good and evil in them, and "good people" are capable of committing evil deeds, if the circumstances are right. In Alfred Hitchcock's world, no one is safe - no one.
In dramatizing this fear, Hitchcock
employs a technique he calls the "Bomb Theory." This scenario runs as follows: Two men are sitting at a table discussing baseball. They talk for about five minutes, when suddenly, there is a huge explosion, which gives the audience a terrible shock, which lasts for about fifteen seconds. According to Hitchcock's Bomb Theory, when the scene opens, you show the audience that there is a bomb under the table, which is set to go off in five minutes. While the men are sitting casually discussing baseball, the audience is squirming in their seats, thinking, Don't sit there talking about baseball... there's a bomb under the table! Get rid of it! The audience is overwhelmed with the sense to warn the characters of the danger which they perceive, and which the characters are not aware of. Hitchcock's method transfers the menace from the screen to the minds of the audience, until it becomes unbearable - at which point there is a climax. An important footnote to this theory: You must never let the bomb go off and kill anybody. Otherwise, the audience will be very mad at you.
The Bomb Theory is what made Hitchcock "The Master of Suspense." He lets the audience know everything about the menace's presence in advance, while the characters usually know virtually nothing. As the characters stumble haplessly into the trap, the emotion of suspense is created. Hitchcock was never so concerned with the details of his films as he was with their style. His attitude of "style is everything" comes across with his definition of "MacGuffin." The MacGuffin is "the thing that the spies are after, which nobody else cares about" - what we would normally term a catalyst. The plot of the film is simply a vehicle for Hitchcock to wave his magic wand of suspense. In Notorious (1946), the MacGuffin is Uranium-235 that the Nazis want so they can build an atom bomb. In North By Northwest (1959), it's the microfilm ("government secrets") that Vandamm (James Mason) is taking out of the country. To Hitchcock, the MacGuffin is really nothing at all. It's not important what the MacGuffin is - it could be anything - and Hitchcock generally reveals its identity sometime before the end of the film, so that its revelation is not a part of the dramatic conclusion.
Hitchcock employed much the same formula for most of his films. His favorite premise is that of mistaken identity, or the "Wrong Man" theme. In North By Northwest, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken to be a spy, which turns his life upside down. In Frenzy (1972), Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) is set up by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) to take the fall for a series of "necktie" murders. In Vertigo (1958), Judy Barton (Kim Novak) poses as the deranged and suicidal Madeline Elster, luring John "Scotty" Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) into playing the alibi for a murder set up. Hitchcock has many variations on this theme throughout his filmography.
Well-known locales are used in many of Hitchcock's films. He does this to emphasize the fact that evil exists in the most moral places and revered halls of America and the world. The Statue of Liberty (Saboteur, 1942), Mount Rushmore (North By Northwest), London (Frenzy), and scores of other famous places are the backdrops to Hitchcock's dramas of terror. The moral commonplace of these locales is used to intensify the presence of evil, a technique Hitchcock uses to his greatest advantage.
Hitchcock made an invaluable contribution to the motion picture industry during his lifetime. His philosophies, techniques, and style make him one of the cinematic greats, along with Orson Welles, John Huston, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and others. His career spanned a unique period in the film industry that is gone forever, and we are fortunate to have the majority of his work to study and enjoy, and to preserve for posterity
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