Alfred Hitchcock Movie “The Birds (1963)”

Introduction

When auteur theory was being developed, Alfred Hitchcock was frequently acknowledged as the consummate exemplar, and his name evokes immediate expectations in terms of themes and techniques. As befits the master of mystery and suspense, his films play with the audience's nerves, sexually or tabooed areas assume central or implicit places in his work (the latent homosexuality of Strangers on a Train, the parody of an Oedipus complex in Psycho and the traumatic remembrance of repressed memories of Marnie), there is a persistent element of black comedy, and frequent eccentric characterisations. Hitchcock was influenced by the German Expressionists, and admired their ability "to express ideas in purely visual terms" (Spoto 68). It is this visual expression of thought and psychology that Hitchcock achieves throughout his films.

Analysis

Hitchcock's films are marked by his mastery of cinematic technique which is exemplified in his use of camera viewpoints, elaborate editing and soundtrack to build suspense. Notorious includes an incredible zoom-in from a high shot to an extreme close-up of a significant plot detail and suspense building inter-cutting of the final scene. In a scene in Blackmail, Hitchcock uses a complex pattern of sound and dialogue based around the word knife to reflect feelings of guilt and in the The Thirty-Nine Steps there is a cut from a woman's scream to the similar sound of a train whistle (Hollows, pp 23-171). His personal stamp is typified by the use of a lightbulb to produce the effect of an ominous, glowing glass of milk in Suspicion. This attribution of symbolic power to inanimate objects is another hallmark of Hitchcock: a bread knife (Blackmail), a key (Notorious). He also places great focus on the creation of set pieces where he is able to exercise his talent for detail and suspense (Neil Sinyard, pp 45-73).

Hitchcock's vision of the world is reflected in the themes that predominate in his films. The specific psychology that is presented in the films, such as the fascination with wrongful accusation and imprisonment, is a significant part of the Hitchcock signature. One of the basic themes is that of: the mistaken identity, the wrong man accused who must find the real perpetrator in order to prove his innocence. Hitchcock also found visual expression for his themes in recurrent motifs that express his vision of the world: staircases (Strangers On A Train, Vertigo, Psycho), sinister houses (Psycho), chasms (Vertigo, ...