Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock (born August 13, 1899, London, England—died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, California, U.S.) English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive career. His films are marked by a macabre sense of humour and a somewhat bleak view of the human condition.

(Read Alfred Hitchcock’s 1965 Britannica essay on film production.)

Early life

Hitchcock grew up in London’s East End in a milieu once haunted by the notorious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, talk of whom was still current in Hitchcock’s youth two decades later. Although he had two siblings, he recalled his youth as a lonely one, with a father who was a stern disciplinarian; it is said that he once ordered Alfred to appear at the local police station with a note saying that he had been misbehaving, whereupon the sergeant on duty (at the request of Hitchcock’s father) locked him up for a few minutes, a sufficient length of time to give Alfred a fear of enclosed spaces and a strong concern for wrongful imprisonment, both of which would figure in his later work. When he was not being disciplined, he was cosseted by an overly watchful mother, who used food as a balm—to which he would later trace his trademark paunch.

Hitchcock went to St. Ignatius College before attending the London County Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation in 1913–14. He worked in the sales department at W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works Company until 1918, when he moved to the advertising department. Giving in to his artistic side, Hitchcock enrolled at the University of London in 1916 to take drawing and design classes. His facility in that field in 1920 helped land him a spot designing title cards (which silent films required) for the American film company Famous Players–Lasky, which had opened a British branch in Islington. When Famous Players closed down its British branch in 1922, he stayed on at Islington. He worked on films for independent producers and came to assume more responsibility, working as an art director, production designer, editor, assistant director, and writer.

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First films

Hitchcock’s first film as a director was the comedy Mrs. Peabody (1922; also called Number 13), which was not completed, for lack of funding. His first released film was Always Tell Your Wife (1923), which he codirected with its star Seymour Hicks, but he did not receive credit. Solo credit did not come for another two years, with the melodrama The Pleasure Garden (1925). That was followed by The Mountain Eagle (1926), a drama set in the Kentucky mountains. But it was The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) that both he and students of the cinema would come to regard as his first “real” work—and one that very much drew on his youthful surroundings. Adapted from a popular novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, the suspenseful story introduces the structure of many Hitchcock films to come: a London man (Ivor Novello) is accused of being a Jack the Ripper-like killer and finds it nearly impossible to prove his innocence. The film became his first hit and also was the first film in which he made his trademark cameo appearance.

In 1926 Hitchcock married his film editor and script supervisor, Alma Reville. The following year he made the melodrama Downhill, Easy Virtue (from a Noel Coward play), and the boxing drama The Ring, which was a critical success. The comedies The Farmer’s Wife and Champagne (both 1928) were followed by the tragic romance (and box-office hit) The Manxman (1929).

Hitchcock’s first talking picture was the thriller Blackmail (1929). One of the year’s biggest hits in England, it became the first British film to make use of synchronized sound only after the completed silent version was postdubbed and partly reshot. Polish actress Anny Ondra (who had starred in The Manxman) played a would-be model who stabs an artist when he tries to assault her. The murder investigation is headed by the model’s fiancé, but she is being blackmailed for the killing and is afraid to confide in him. The film’s most memorable sequence is a chase through the British Museum and across its roof, but Hitchcock builds the mood of encroaching menace throughout. Juno and the Paycock (1929) was adapted from Sean O’Casey’s popular play, while Elstree Calling (1930) was a collection of musical and comedy sketches that Hitchcock codirected with three others.

Murder! (1930) provided Hitchcock with another opportunity to explore cinematic suspense. Shot simultaneously in a German-language version (Mary, 1931), it stars Herbert Marshall as Sir John Menier, a gentleman knight and famed actor who turns amateur sleuth in order to save from the gallows an actress who has been convicted of murder. Though light in tone, the film is distinguished by its dramatic camera work, colourful theatrical setting, and groundbreaking use of voice-over narration. Neither The Skin Game (1931) nor Rich and Strange (1931; also called East of Shanghai), an odd comedy, made much of an impact at the time of release, but Number Seventeen (1932) offered a thrilling chase finale. The musical Waltzes from Vienna (1934; also called Strauss’s Great Waltz) was Hitchcock’s last foray into that genre.

First international releases: The Man Who Knew Too Much to Jamaica Inn

Hitchcock signed with Gaumont-British in 1934, and his first film for that company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was also his first international success. Leslie Banks and Edna Best star as the Lawrences, a married couple on vacation in Switzerland with their daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). They inadvertently become enmeshed in a plot to assassinate a diplomat when the conspirators kidnap Betty to ensure the Lawrences’ silence until the deed is accomplished by the lethal Abbott (German actor Peter Lorre in his first English-speaking role). In just 75 minutes, culminating with the classic Royal Albert Hall finale, Hitchcock established himself as the new master of the sinister.

Hitchcock built on that foundation with The 39 Steps (1935), an adaptation of John Buchan’s thriller. Robert Donat played the archetypal Hitchcock protagonist: an innocent vacationer unwillingly drawn into an elaborate scheme hatched by a nest of spies. On the run, handcuffed to a young woman (Madeleine Carroll) whom he has just met, they are hunted while they try to decipher the meaning of the film’s mysterious title. This was a premier example of a genre Hitchcock virtually invented—the romantic thriller. Secret Agent (1936) offers Carroll, John Gielgud, and Lorre as undercover agents for British intelligence, traipsing through the Swiss Alps on the trail of hostile spies. Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, the film subsumes romantic byplay in favour of plentiful mordant humour.

Sabotage (1936) was far less playful, as might be expected of an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel about terrorism, The Secret Agent. Sylvia Sidney played Winnie Verloc, who is married to a terrorist (Oscar Homolka) who gives her young brother (Desmond Tester) a bomb-laden suitcase to deliver without telling him of its contents; the lad dallies while delivering it, and the suitcase explodes in an intensely suspenseful sequence.

Young and Innocent (1937) was considerably more charming and still offered much in the way of suspense. Derrick de Marney starred as a young man who (once again) has been unjustly accused of murder; Pilbeam played the local constable’s teenage daughter who decides to help the accused, and they quickly fall in love.

The Lady Vanishes (1938) is a deft thriller that finds a traveller (Margaret Lockwood) riding a train across Europe; she wonders at the sudden—and apparently unnoticed—disappearance of another fellow traveller (Dame May Whitty), but no one else on the train seems to remember her. This was Hitchcock’s biggest hit—in both England and the United States—since The 39 Steps, and its masterful synthesis of comedy and suspense inspired American producer David O. Selznick to sign Hitchcock to a long-term contract. Before moving to Hollywood, however, Hitchcock made one last picture in England, the Gothic costumer Jamaica Inn (1939), from a popular novel by Daphne du Maurier; Charles Laughton played a country squire who secretly heads a band of pirates.