Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan professor of Film Studies
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and this is Frame By Frame.
And I want to say a few words about the director Alfred Hitchcock.
Alfred Hitchcock has a unique place in cinema history.
He's the only director who can be considered a genre.
A "Hitchcock film" is almost immediately recognizable. You know what you're going to get.
But it didn't start out that way.
He made films in Germany, believe it or not, in the beginning of his career
because in England his films were considered just too outrageous.
So, he made films like "The White Shadow," which has just been rediscovered,
And "The Pleasure Garden" which was sort of a romance.
But his first big breakthrough film is "The Lodger," which was shot in 1926, and was a Jack the Ripper story.
In 1929, he directed the first British talkie called "Blackmail."
ACTRESS: No! No! Let me go! Let me go!
It was actually shot as a silent film, but Hitchcock was creative enough to turn the thing into a sound film
when he discovered that the leading actress could not speak English, and they couldn't dub,
so he had someone stand right outside of the camera range and read her lines while she mouthed them.
So, he instantly adapted to changes in film technology.
By the 1930s, he was making films like "The 39 Steps," in 1935, which is considered one of the great spy films.
Shortly after that, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," and "The Lady Vanishes."
And then in 1940, he comes to America and makes "Rebecca,"
based on Dame Daphne du Maurier's novel, for David O. Selznick.
ACTRESS: "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living."
Hitchcock always storyboarded his films very agressively.
He always said that storyboarding was the most interesting part of the film,
and shooting the film was the least interesting part of the film.
A famous story is told about "Rebecca" that after Selznik screened the first rough cut,
he said, "that's great, now where are the trims?"
The editor brought him a reel that had about 600 feet on it, or about 6 minutes of footage
because he had shot only what he needed.
ACTRESS: "Before they get to us, stop the music and tell them. Tell them all"
ACTOR: "Honey, this is the Sutton mansion. I'm just a guy from Glendale, California,
wanted by the police. They'll grab me as soon as I open my mouth."
Through the 1940s, he made a series of really interesting films like "Saboteur" with Robert Cummings,
which is about Nazi saboteurs in the United States.
"Shadow of a Doubt" with Joseph Cotton, which is one of the more acidic tales of small-town America.
ACTOR: "The boat's too small right now for me and this German."
"Lifeboat," in which a bunch of people are in a lifeboat, who've just been sunk by a Nazi sub,
and they're trying to survive in the sea.
"Spellbound" is a psychological drama.
ACTOR: "Two fellows meet, like you and I. No connection between them whatsoever.
Each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of, so they swap murders."
Then in the 1950s, he begins to move into deeper territory with "Strangers on a Train,"
which is a psychological thriller with Robert Walker.
Then he makes "Vertigo" with Jimmy Stewart...
"Rear Window" with Jimmy Stewart as a photographer who is trapped in his apartment after an accident,
and views his neighbors and discovers one of them is a murderer.
And then, of course, in 1960... at this point he's making features for Paramount,
and his TV show for Universal, and he starts to make "Psycho."
ACTRESS SCREAMS
That's a whole story in itself, and we'll do that in a separate Frame By Frame.
But Hitchcock pretty much shattered the censorship barrier with "Psycho".
After that, unfortunately he never really topped it.
He made "The Birds" in 1963. He made "Marnie" with Tippy Hedren shortly thereafter.
His last film was "The Family Plot" in 1976.
But he is definitely considered the master of suspense.
A brillant technician who was also an artist, and this is the important thing about him.
He's one of the first people that the French picked up on, as the auteur of all of his films.
So, Alfred Hitchcock, a person that everybody knows about... the Master of Suspense.