Culmination of Alfred Hitchcock's Career in the Historic Developments

The first half of the historical exploration of cinematic expression is the culmination of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Hitchcock dominated all other films in the Hollywood Classic era of Cinema where he proved no secrets to his studies and inspiration during his growth and maturation as a filmmaker. From 1917 to 1960’s there was a distinctive collection of movie’s that had the same way of telling a story better known as the Classic Hollywood cinema. The film style is known to have a set of unwritten rules which was widely accepted by many film makers of the time due to the new wave of film which had very little rules except for the ones Hitchcock was already creating for himself. Vertigo is a captivating story told in a beautiful way at times and others as an astonishingly psychologically true way at other times. However, Hitchcock’s most dominant time period was from 1948-1960 whereas by 1960 Hitchcock had directed four films all often ranked between the greatest in the history of film: Rear Window(1954), Vertigo(1958), North by Northwest(1958) and Psycho(1960).

In a span of a decade Hitchcock was able to create such a house-hold name for himself to the extent he received his own TV show called Alfred Hitchcock Presents which was a half-hour anthology television series that featured both mysteries and melodramas and was hosted by no one else but Hitchcock himself. From Psycho to The Birds to Rear Window to Vertigo to North by Northwest to The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock had a way of scaring his audience, all while making his viewers think. He indisputably knew how to create both fear and mystery innocently into an audience’s eyes.

Many people argue that their favorite Hitchcock film isn’t Vertigo hence by no means it is universally-renowned, as one of his many great works. In the past I’ve wondered if Hitchcock’s pure productivity was what set him apart from other directors or if it was the sheer quality he displayed for each film. For example, Alfred made scarier films like Psycho, more playful ones like Rear Window, or more suspenseful ones like Strangers on a Train, among many other classics which are very easy to understand. However, there’s a very unique intensity to Vertigo, and it has this immense drive of power driven by the suspense displayed within the sound effects as well as the seriousness portrayed by the actors giving the movie an eerie, a “something’s going to happen” feeling, from the audience. The drive of suspense. Hitchcock embodied suspense and horror in Vertigo as the audience is always aware that there is an inevitability that something can go wrong at any time. To think that Alfred was able to create such a strong plot with such a well-envisioned film is truly incredible. The film brought viewers in and out of emotions derived from the actors ranging from sadness, to love then to happiness and sadness again. The film had its twists and turns but ends in a shock for viewers and for the protagonist “Scotty”. Hitchcock who could tease the audience when he wants, offers the trickiest hints of a scheming personality displayed by the antagonist “Madeline” who falls in love with a man who sees her alternate reality she has created for herself behind the polished disguise of Hitchcock’s plots.

In Vertigo there’s something utterly serious happening, almost as if the director decided to drop the sophisticated games he was playing with the industry in his other films and once and for all, lay something bare about his and societies deepest tendencies and fears at the time. German Expressionism is a cultural movement that is not distinguished by a singular style or method of creation, hence it describes both the mindset of the director and the viewers within the time they lived in. In the era they lived in, better known as the Classic Hollywood era was considered a time of reconstruction for the US as people were coming back from war with all sorts of trauma. With a film so suspenseful in a time where people had lived suspense for so long but never physically seen suspense in the science of film.

The director used the fears of the 50’s in his film to try and relate to the audience while also showing the audience a side of last romance, a sign of hope that everything would work out. Hitchcock’s interpretation of Vertigo was so humane that it is still able to relate to viewers in today’s society. Audiences all over the world love Vertigo and many of Hitchcock’s other films which always have an underlying suspenseful moral that relates to reality. Alfred Hitchcock’s style with the film Vertigo comprises the use of camera movement to imitate a person's gaze, thus turning viewers into voyeurs and framing shots to maximize anxiety and fear presented by the actors. After “Scotty” had seen his Police partner fall off a roof trying to help him and die, “Scotty” has a post-traumatic stress disorder for heights, every time he goes up heights the cinematographer and editor both came together and displayed anxiety and fear in “Scotty’s” face while he looked down flights down of stairs. The director, Hitchcock, did a phenomenal job in the clarity for the plot of the film, the narrative was consistently concise, leading viewers into suspense and sometimes even horror.

Vertigo is considered by many critiques along with Rotten Tomatoes that Hitchcock’s most personal and revealing film, dealing with obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman he desires. Vertigo explores more freely and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death than any other work in his filmography or let alone any other work in filmography at the time. Vertigo contains what is frequently referred to as a dolly zoom which has been copied many times by filmmakers, a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts, a technique wherein the camera is dollied either forward or backward while the zoom on the lens is pulled in the opposite direction. The dolly effect was used in Vertigo so much that they named the dolly zoom, the Vertigo Effect. In scenes where the cinematographer lunges forward into “Scotty” eyes to make use of the darkness in the eyes to go into a pitch-dark room where it’s just “Scotty” wandering in alone in the darkness of his mind.

Hitchcock is seen today by many as the director who managed to combine the arts and entertainment in a way very few have ever been able to match. His innovations and vision have influenced a countless amount of filmmakers, producers and actors still in today’s society. He remains by far the most-studied film director of all time. What we as a society have learned over time from Hitchcock is a greater and greater fascination with deviant psychology, perceiving his character’s as messed up as he could. That very versatility and genre defiance confused audiences in 1958, resulting in disappointing box office sales. They weren’t ready for it. Times were too serious and people were looking for something humorous, little did they know, Hitchcock was only making one of the best films to ever have been created with Vertigo. In all his aspects, Hitchcock created a classic with the nuanced depths of the story, cinematography, and soundtrack perfecting his style of suspense in the Classic Hollywood Era.