Member-only story
How Alfred Hitchcock’s Films Use 50 Years Worth of Cinematic Principles
If you are into cinema, you’ve probably heard the name Hitchcock a bunch. But what really makes him so special? In this article, I talk about what makes him unique, and how his work displays these concepts.
Thesis:
Hitchcock’s influences of German cinema through the shadows and emphasis of visuals brought from silent cinema, furthered his venture of incorporating Eisenstein’s discovery of the soviet montage which allowed his films to be filled with depth through the framing of his cinematography, concise editing, and intricate use of sound.
German Expressionism and Visuals
Films are mainly a visual medium due to their silent cinema origins, and emphasizing that was a difficult task that German filmmakers focused a great deal on when producing.
Some of these concepts include:
“the existence of an occult or shadow world that exists beyond the domain of the ordinary…expressed through…opposition between light and dark…highly stylized costume design, and non-naturalistic acting styles” (Allen 165).
German filmmakers birthed these concepts from their perspective on the world: one that was heavily shaken through the impacts of the Great War.
