Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (Leytonstone, London, 13 August 1899 – Bel Air, Los Angeles, April 29, 1980) was a film director British-born American.
Biography
Early years
He was raised in a middle class family. His parents, William (1862-1914) and Emma (1863-1942), were shopkeepers strict education Catholic and his brothers (William and Eileen) were greater than he. Its strict education, coupled with its somewhat coarse appearance, made the small Alfred a deferential, shy child elements of his personality that encampments it throughout his life. Hitchcock was sent to Sain Vincent Paul, but due to the death of his father had to leave school in 1915 to begin working with the Telegraph Company Henley. Hitchcock was always an avid admirer of Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe, and a lover of cinema, especially after having seen “the birth of a nation” of D.w. Griffith.
Entry into the world of cinema
In 1920 was devoted to make films of silent film in the Famous Players-Lasky labels. This occasional paper provoked, little by little, the young Hitchcock started to passionate by the world of cinema. This is how he began working as assembler, artistic director and screenwriter films from directors such as Donald Crisp and Hugh Ford. Famous Players Lasky met Alma Reville, who worked as assembler, and with whom he married in 1926. Soul was Assistant Director and writer of several films of her husband. July 7, 1928 born daughter Patricia, who participate as an actress in strangers on a train and psychosis.
On the professional side, Hitchcock spent three years working as Assistant Director of Graham Cutts. In 1923, was tasked the filming of the short Number 13 though production was stopped and the film was unfinished. Anyway, the possibility of finishing a film appeared shortly after, since directed in Munich, in 1925, his first completely finished: the garden of joy, a German–British co-production to become very popular. Shortly thereafter, London Director directed the first sound film in England: the girl in London in 1929. During filming, surprise of her Royal Highness was visited Elisabeth, Duchess of York, which became the mother of the present monarch.
With few jobs, Hitchcock became brilliant an industry icon quite discreet as it was the British. Films as murder! (Murder!, 1930), the man who knew too much (The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934) and especially 39 steps (The 39 Steps, 1935) made him around an international emblem new British cinema. Anecdotally, it was famous for his habit of spending jokes heavy, especially with the actors.
Hollywood calls Hitchcock
August 22, 1937 visited New York family to interview David o. Selznick, producer of gone with the wind, who hired him on July 14, 1938. Producer conditions convinced Hitchcock and moved with his family to United States in 1939.
The first job Selznick commissioned Hitchcock was the adaptation of the novel of Daphne du Maurier Rebecca (1940). This Gothic melodrama explores the fears of an excited and young wife (Joan Fontaine), moved to Great Britain and must fight with a distant husband (Sir Laurence Olivier), a homemaker keys too possessive (Judith Anderson) and the memory of the deceased wife of her husband: the beautiful and mysterious Rebeca. The film won eleven Award nominations Oscar. But John Ford took the year award for best director by the grapes of wrath, taking is it to the British, who never won a statuette, except the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award, honorary character. Apart from this, began to emerge early problems between Selznick and Hitchcock. And it is that British director could not withstand restrictions filmic and artistic producer.
The second American film Hitchcock would be centered in Europe. Foreign Correspondent was also nominated for best film. The film was shot in the first year of the Second World War and was inspired by the rapid changes that Europe experienced in those moments, described by an American Journal, Joel McCrea correspondent. The film mixed sets built in Hollywood with scenes from the real Europe. According to the censorship of the Hollywood production code, the film avoided direct references to Germany and Germans.
From this point, and the three decades following directed films in Hollywood at the rate of one per year, reserving a brief appearance (cameo), always without dialogue in all of them. These brief appearances became the particular signature that Hitchcock introduced in all his movies. It was gradually, placing these increasingly closer to the start of the film appearances because, as told to François Truffaut, the public knew that emergence occur and this caused a distraction to the development of the film effect.
Subsequently became “suspicion” (1941), starring Cary Grant, with whom he maintained a close friendship. Alfred Hitchcock always sought to choose for their film actors and actresses as known by any facet, already outside of sensuality, sympathy or seduction, thinking as well the role was more easily defined from the beginning. Another of his big fetish actors would be James Stewart, who agreed for the first time in the rope in 1948.
September 26, 1942 died in London his mother at the age of 79. In addition, the following year, died also his brother William.
Worried about his morbid obesity (weighed 135 kilograms), came to lose 40 pounds in a few months.
In 1944 he created his own production company together with Sidney Bernstein: the Transatlantic Pictures. That same year, began working with Ingrid Bergman, the first blonde “hitchcockiana”, which he felt fascination. Shot chained (1946) starring Cary Grant. According to the own Hitchcock noted in an interview, preferred blonde players because it considered more mysterious.
Along with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck wheel recalls, a film about psychoanalysis, whose most important detail is the collaboration of Salvador Dalí, designed and developed the decorations of the dream scene.
Of Ingrid Bergman Grace Kelly
In 1948, Bergman leaves act with Hitchcock to work with the director Roberto Rossellini. This was a great blow to Hitchcock, but soon regain their confidence knowing which would become his new Muse, Grace Kelly, which he directed in rear window (1954), co-starring James Stewart, crime perfect (1954), Ray Milland, and catch a thief (1955), with Cary Grant.
According to the director, the film of his harvest more appreciated was guilty false (also known as the wrong man) (1957) starring Henry Fonda and Vera Miles.
Emerged a new TV project. Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a series which featured himself a few short stories online movies. However, the wedding of his “Muse” with Prince Rainier III of Monaco and its withdrawal from the film, made his health worsened momentarily.
Filmography
In cinema
As director
* Number 13 (number 13), unfinished and lost today
* The Pleasure Garden (garden of joy)
* The Mountain Eagle (Eagle Mountains)
* 1927 The Lodger / A story of the London Fog (the enemy of the blondes / the tenant)
* The Ring (ring)
* Downhill
* Easy Virtue (unclear virtue)
* Champagne
* 1928 The farmer’s Wife (farmer’s wife)
* The Manxman
* 1929 Blackmail (blackmail / the London girl)
* 1930 Elstree Calling (called Elstree)
* Juno and the Paycock
* 1930 Murder! (Murder)
* Mary
* 1931 Rich and Strange (rich and strange / bad is the best known)
* The Skin Game (dirty game)
* 1932 Number Seventeen (number 17)
* 1933 Waltzes from Vienna (Vienna waltzes)
* The Man Who Knew Too Much (the man who knew too much), British version of 1934
* The 39 Steps (39 steps)
* Sabotage (sabotage), based on the novel by Joseph Conrad “Secret agent” (not to be confused with his next film, Secret Agent, nor with the 1942 titled Saboteur)
* 1936 Secret Agent (Agent secret / the secret agent), not to be confused with the novel “Secret agent” Conrad (filmed by Hitchcock in 1936 with the title of Sabotage)
* Young and Innocent (innocence and youth)
* 1938 The Lady Vanishes (alarm in the express / Lady disappears)
* 1939 Jamaica Inn (La posada de Jamaica / la maldita Inn)
* 1940 Rebecca (Rebecca / Rebecca, an unforgettable woman)
* 1940 Foreign Correspondent (Special Envoy / foreign correspondent)
* 1941 Mr. and Mrs. Smith (original marriage / your beloved enemy)
* 1941 Suspicion (Sospecha suspected/the suspicion)
* 1942 Saboteur (sabotage / saboteur), not to be confused with his 1936 film entitled Sabotage
* 1943 Shadow of Doubt to (shadow of a doubt)
* Bon Voyage (bon voyage), short film in French during the 2nd world war propaganda
* Aventure Malagasy (Malagasy adventure), short film in French during the 2nd world war propaganda
* 1944 Lifeboat (Castaway / 8 adrift)
* 1945 Spellbound (recalls / tell me your life)
* 1946 Notorious (chained / yo is my heart)
* 1947 The Paradine Case (Paradine process / love agony)
* 1948 Rope (the rope / diabolical feast)
* Under Capricorn (under the sign of Capricorn, Atormentada)
* Stage Fright (panic in the scene)
* 1951 Strangers on a train (strangers on a train / sinister Covenant)
* 1953 I Confess (I confess I / my secret condemns me / my SIN I condemned)
* 1954 Dial M for Murder (perfect crime / M with death / fatal call / call fatal (perfect crime))
* Rear Window (rear window)
* 1955 To Catch a Thief (catch a thief / to catch the thief)
* 1955 The Trouble with Harry (but… who killed Harry? / the third shot)
* 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much (the man who knew too much / in hands of fate), the American stage of his 1934 film remake
* 1956 The Wrong Man (false guilty / wrong man)
* 1958 Vertigo (Vertigo / from among the dead)
* 1959 North by Northwest (with death in heels / international intrigue)
* Psychosis
* The Birds (the birds)
* 1964 Marnie (Marnie the thief / Marnie)
* Torn Curtain (torn curtain)
* Topaz
* Frenzy (frenzy)
* 1976 Family Plot (the plot / macabre Trama)
[Edit] As a screenwriter
* Always Tell Your Wife
* 1923 From woman to woman (Woman to Woman)
* The White Shadow
* The Passionate Adventure
* 1925 The prude’s fall
* The Blackguard
* Champagne
As a producer
* Suspicion
* Chained
* Paradine process
* The rope
* Atormentada
* Panic in the scene
* Strangers on a train
* I confess
* Perfect crime
* Rear window
* Catches a thief
