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Alfred Hitchcock: Film Mechanisms for Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock was famously known as the master of suspense. Hitchcock was interested in

emotional pursuit which he dubbed suspense and contrasted it with mystery akin to an intellectual

pursuit. (AFI). Hitchcock used surprises, twists, humor through the medium of the camera and frame-

by-frame he lured his audience in keeping them guessing as to what was next. “As a film director you

can throw things at them [audience], hurl them off a cliff, or pull them into a dangerous love story, and

they know that nothing will happen to them. They're confident that they'll be able to walk out the exit

when its done and resume their normal lives. And, the more fun they have, the quicker they will come

back begging for more” said Hitchcock (Bays).

Hitchcock made the distinction between technique and content and to him technique overcame

content. In one example he said an artist who paints an apple is interested in how the apple looks, but

not whether the apple tastes sour or sweet. It was the style and manner in which the painter created the

apple. Hitchcock's style was to create suspense by grabbing the audience and making them go through

an emotional roller coaster ride. Therefore, three of Hitchcock's famous movies will be explored for his

film editing mastery; Rear Window (1954), Strangers on a Train (1951), and Psycho (1960). For Rear

Window I will look at the the opening scene, the first kiss scene, murder attempt, and voyeurism. For

Strangers on a Train I will address the film technique used in the opening scene, and the famous tennis

match scene two thirds the way through and the use of MacGuffin. For Psycho I will explore the first

murder scene, the famous shower scene.

Hitchcock was voyeuristic and this extended out to some of his movies. One such benevolent

example was Rear Window (1954) written by John Michael Hayes. Starring James Stewart in his lead

role as L.B. Jefferies, and Grace Kelly as Lisa Fremont. The movie is shot almost entirely from

vantage point of wheel-chair bound James Stewart as the snoopy neighbor who's curiosity and

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boredom gets the best of him. He picks up binoculars as spying device, and then eventually his camera

lens to look into everyday lives of his neighbor's. Over the course of the movie this restless, bored man

stumbles onto a gloomy world suspecting that one of his neighbor's has murdered his wife. John

Michael Hayes, was a radio mystery screenwriter when he and Hitchcock met. Together through their

imaginative abilities they created 'The Hitchcock Village,' in which James Stewart resides looking into

a courtyard and 32 apartments (Hare 169). Hitchcock, and cinematographer, Robert Burks used point-

of-view editing, jump cuts, Kuleshov effect, step-printing to create suspense and to keep the audience

on their feet.

For instance, “In the opening scene Hitchcock uses the camera as what John Ford termed an

information booth by panning to pictures Jefferies has taken, including Life magazine covers” (Hare

169). A picture of an Indianapolis race car crash is important during this pan scene because this

coupled with a phone call from an editor reveals how Jefferies broke his legs. Without any need of

dialogue Hitchcock through the use of his editing technique was able to reveal a great deal of

information about Jefferies life.

Hitchcock was keen on using the Kuleshov effect in his movies. This effect can be seen in a

immediately after James Stewart's nurse Stella has just left Stewart's apartment after a dialogue over

love. The effect begins when there's a close-up shot of Jefferies as he leans forward on his wheelchair

and curiously glances out the window. Then the camera cuts to what Jefferies is looking at which in

this scene is of a newly wed couple moving into their new apartment and their landlord giving them the

keys. The camera then cuts back to a close-up of Stewart for a reaction shot (a smile, confusion,

curiosity). The Kuleshov effect is what Alfred Hitchcock during a documentary interview called “Pure

cinema” (DaVegaFilmStudies). Pure Cinema means, “... films that convey abstract emotional

experiences through unique cinematic devices such as montage (the Kuleshov effect), camera

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movement and camera angles, sound-visual relationships, super-impositions and other optical effects,

and visual composition” (Wikipedia: Pure Cinema). This effect is seen throughout the movie and it

assisted in creating a voyeuristic impression. Free of dialogue this effect pulls the audience in as a

voyeur creating various emotions.

In another scene, towards the end of the movie, Thorwald, the murderer, has figured out who's

been spying on him. James Stewart and the Thorwald meet for a life-compromising fight and as

Stewart hangs over the ledge facing a long fall the scene speeds up. We notice that some of the women

neighbor's rush out, but it appears as if the scene is edited and accelerated. Hitchcock acknowledged

this in an interview with Francois Truffat and then used an analogy to explain why he did that. To him

it was like standing besides a train so close to facing demise one feels anxiety as the train dashes by.

This Hitchcock contrasted with the feeling one gets when standing a half a mile away and seeing a

slower moving train giving you the feeling that you're safe, and secure at this distance. As mentioned

above, the main basis of suspense to Hitchcock's was to keep the audience feeling emotions (fear,

anxiety, sadness, boredom, happiness, etc.) per frame. Hitchcock accelerated the scene to give the

audience the feeling that one was standing beside the train rather standing afar. The experience would

be tense, suspenseful, and fearful. To Hitchcock the mere reality of the two men fighting was not

enough, the reality was to actually “get in there and make the audience feel it” (Truffat). Meaning, to

get in there and accelerate the scene to evoke emotions.

Now, an interesting thing to notice during the the very first kiss in Rear Window is how the

movement changes. Hitchcock used the step-printing effect for this scene (Mogg). Which is somewhat

like a strobes and slowmotion. Some at Cinematography.com define it as “...Printing some frames of

the original to more than one frame of the print. This produces a sort of slow motion, but with a

stepping look, because you don't have enough frames per second to get the illusion of motion.”

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Hitchcock explored new technologies to keep up with the directionality change of Hollywood

from silent film to the talkies and from black and white to technicolor. In Rear Window we saw a

glimpse of the highly effective methodology of film editing in technicolor that created a subjective

experience in the minds of the viewers. In 1951, Hitchcock released yet another suspense, Strangers on

a Train, a movie about two strangers who accidentally meet on a train. One of them is a famous tennis

player, Guy played by Farley Granger, and the other a psychopathic Bruno played by Robert Walker.

Bruno, wants to kill his father and he suggests to Guy that they crisscross murders of people who they

most dreaded. Since they are strangers this would eliminate any blame. Like the information booth in

Rear Window Hitchcock uses dialogue-free film parallel editing to convey to the audience who each

character is in the opening scene.

Parallel action indicates that eventually two stories will converge. The opening scene of

Strangers on a Train starts off with close-up shots of shoes of two distinct individuals one moving left

the other moving right. No facial shots are shown. The shoes moving left are dandy colored and the

shoes moving right are ordinary colored. This gives the impression that these two individuals are

moving closer to one another. William Hare in his book explains the contrasting characteristics,

“Bruno Antony wears flashy sporting attire and moves with an energetic strut...Guy Haines, while

equally youthful and lithe (he is a top athele), sports attires and a demeanor markedly different from

that of the man he will soon meet...Haine's attire is modest and unassuming. The same would have to

be said of his walk” (Hare 149). A shot cuts away showing people walking through the gates of the

train station followed by moving camera of train tracks. The film moves back to the parallel action

cutting of the feet but now they're on the train. The two men sit down and accidentally one kicks the

others shoe. In these 12 opening shots Hitchcock had introduced two characters to one another and to

the audience (Dancyger 88).

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Another interesting thing about Hitchcock was his use of MacGuffin in his movies. “Hitchcock

over the years described the MacGuffin as a plot device, or gimmick, on which to hang the tension in a

film, ‘the key element of any suspense story” (Bays). In Strangers on a Train a superbly brilliant scene

towards the end of the movie highlights how important the use of MacGuffin was to the movie to

convey suspense and to gain high intense emotions. The mise en scene analysis will further

demonstrate how Hitchcock used suspense to evoke anxiety. Bruno has told Guy that he's going to be

framing Guy by planting the lighter at the sight of the crime scene unless Guy goes along with killing

Bruno's father.

In the following tennis scene the analysis was done with the help of a youtube scene analysis

video (Best et al). The scene opens up with an establishing shot (long-shot) of the tennis stadium to

show a packed audience. We now have the location of where the scene will progress. Hitchcock then

moves to a medium shot facing Guy to show that he's playing tennis. Then immediately after he uses a

reverse angle subjective shot from the point of view of Guy facing his opponent. The reverse angle

shot allows the viewers to sympathize with Guy who's trying racing against time. Hitchcock uses a

clock as a symbolism that time was not on Guy's side and that he needed to hurry up and win the match

in order to intercept Bruno's plan to plant the lighter. Curiously, Hitchcock had a keen interest in

clocks. In Rear Window he's seen in the piano player's room adjusting the clock. In an interview with

Francois Truffat, Hitchcock expanded on why he's shown adjusting the clock by saying that he adjusted

the clock to show that time was running out for the piano player who wanted to make it big.

After Guy looks at the clock, the scene cuts to Bruno walking near a restaurant by the train

tracks. This is another example of parallel cutting where Bruno and Guy are on opposite spectrum both

racing for time. As Bruno walks to the corner of the sidewalk he stops to look at his watch. Hitchcock

uses a reaction shot in this scene to show how important it was for Bruno to arrive at the carnival scene

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before Guy. Bruno holds up the lighter and then is bumped by a by-passer. A medium reaction shot is

taken to show Bruno's reaction to the lighter dropping in the storm drain. The suspense and anxiety of

the audience is matched by the stress and sudden anxiety on the face of Bruno.

The cross-cutting scene between Bruno and Guy is coupled with a score for both characters.

During Guy's match the score is upbeat to give the audience the feeling that Guy is winning. As the

scene cuts to Bruno trying to get the lighter out of the storm drain a more dim, darkly contrasting score

is played. The dark sounding score in Bruno's scene matches his intent to blackmail Guy by planting

the lighter. As Hitchcock cuts to the tennis match, strikes of the racquets hitting the ball back and forth

resembles a metronome furthering the notion of passage of time. Another cut back to Bruno, Hitchcock

shows Bruno's reaction of sweat pouring from his eyebrows as he stretches his arm completely to reach

all the way to the bottom of the storm drain to retrieve his lighter. As the hand slowly reaches the

lighter and firmly grasps on to it, the score changes to a full orchestra to create a triumphant feeling.

Academy award writer-director Paul Haggis, said that, "When he [Bruno] finally managed to grab the

lighter, I cried out with relief, even though only a minute before I had been happy to see him drop it. I

found myself rooting for the villain and realized I had betrayed the hero. I looked around me and the

entire audience felt the same. We felt shame” (Haggis). The tennis match scene ends and moves into a

more climatic scene, a fight on the carosuel.

As the 1960's came around, the world was changing. The sixties were marked by various

changes from the 1950's sexual experimentation, drugs, hippies, Woodstock, etc (Hare 234). Hitchcock

being sensitive to the dawning of this change filmed an answer to what his interpretation was of the

1950's. In the 50's there was repression, Cold-War, a close coming of a nuclear conflict. Along with the

challenging youth of the status quo Hitchcock sided with the youth (Hare 234). He challenged the

1950's by calling it, “uptight fifties” (Hare 234). His critique came in the form of his most best-known

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work, Psycho. A movie about a young Norman Bates who's internalized his mother and created a

double-personality of his former self and his dead mother. A young Janet Leigh has stolen 40,000

dollars from one of her clients and has left town to escape with the money. She ends up at the Bates

Motel where she is murdered. An investigation ensues and the private investigator is also murdered.

Towards the end we learn that Norman Bates had gone crazy and after killing his mother and her lover

he dug up her body and treated it as if she was still around.

The first murder scene: the famous shower scene where Janet is brutally stabbed to death by

Bates occurs roughly 40 minutes into the movie after Janet has abandoned Arizona for California and

has decided to pull over at the Bates Motel to pass the night as the heavy rain subdues. After a

conversation with Norman she heads to bed, but only before she decides to take a shower. Hitchcock

used extreme-close up camera shot to extenuate the viewer's identification with the victim. The shower

scene had a total of 50 cuts and ran for a total of 2 minutes (Dancyger 91). There are several medium

shots in this scene one of Janet taking a shower and the other of Bates entering the bathroom. Other

then that most other shots are extreme close-ups. The close-up shots are taken of the victim, her hands,

feet, torso, blood, the shower, the shower head, water spray, bathtub, shower curtain, the murder

weapon, and the murderer. For every time Hitchcock wanted to show the shock, fear, and resistance of

the victim (Janet) extreme close-up shots were taken of her mouth and her hands (resistance). These

shots are a few seconds long and they are followed by a shot of Janet. When Hitchcock wanted the

viewers to feel suspense, fear and to increase this emotion he interjected with extreme close-up shots of

the murderer's knife as it came down to strike.

As viewers we are shocked at what's happening before our eyes and we are wishing this wasn't

happening to her. Especially since she had just declared that she would be returning the money. We are

hoping for her to live. The two minutes in this scene seem almost never-ending and eternal. The close-

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up shots have this effect. In real life the murder would have been done in a matter of seconds, but

Hitchcock through the use of extreme-close ups extended this beyond real time. The reason why this

happens is simple, Hitchcock made the shots of Janet in shock short while making the close-up shots of

the weapon and the murderer longer. Hitchcock's main motivation in this scene was for the viewer to

identify with the victim. We get point-of-view: subjective shots emphasizing Janet's death (Dancyger

92).

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Bibliography

Best, Connor & McVey, Amanda. “Hitchock: Strangers on a Train Scene Analysis.” Youtube.com. 6 March 2011. Accessed 4 April 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOkiiNUQWwI>

Hare, William. Hitchcock and the Methods of Suspense. Jefferson [North Carolina]: McFarland & Company Inc., 2007. Print.

Dancyger, Ken. The Technique of Film and Video Editing. Burlington [Massachusetts]: Focal Press., 2011. Print.

“Kuleshov Effect.” Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 12 April 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_Effect>

“Pure Cinema.” Wikipedia. 2011. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 12 April 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_cinema>

Truffat, Francois. 12 Hour Audio Interview Between Francois Truffat and Alfred Hitchcock, 1962. MP3.

Bays, Jeff. Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock. Website. Accessed 4 April 2011. <http://www.borgus.com/hitch/>

“Point of View Shot.” Wikipedia. 2011. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc..12 April 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_view_shot>

“Cross-Cutting.” Wikipedia. 2011. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 12 April 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-cutting>

DaVegaFilmStudies. “Hitchcock's Pure Cinema- 'The Kuleshov Effect.'” Online Posting. Youtube.com. 19 Oct 2009. Accessed 4 April 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNVf1N34-io>