All posts tagged "Alfred Hitchcock"
Grace Kelly & Raymond Burr in Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Stills via Rebecca’s (1940, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) opening sequence.
“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive.
And finally, there was Manderley - Manderley - secretive and silent. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of a past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again.”
“Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.”
-Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (via Conde Nast)
On that note, have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Robert Walker & Laura Elliot in Strangers on a Train (1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
In one of Hitchcock’s most famous shots, Strangers on a Train’s pivotal murder is seen as reflected in a pair of glasses. Hitchcock & his director of photography, Robert Burks, achieved this effect by placing a concave mirror on the floor and having the actress, Laura Elliott, stand next to it as she simulated slowly falling dead to the floor. Elliot’s reflection in the concave mirror as she fell was filmed and the shot was then printed onto the lenses of the glasses (scene on youtube here).
Robert Walker & Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train (1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
“You do my murder, I do yours…for example, your wife, my father. Crisscross.”
Lila Crane (Vera Miles) makes the acquaintance of Mrs. Bates in Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
“I think he’s a very good technician. And he has something in Psycho, he had some moments. Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells very much about him. Not very good things.”
“He is completely infantile, and I would like to know more - no, I don’t want to know - about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women. But this picture is very interesting.”
-Ingmar Bergman on Alfred Hitchcock (1971)
James Stewart in stills from Vertigo’s nightmare sequence (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (sequence viewable here)
Bernard Herrmann - The Nightmare via Vertigo: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
First part of Herrmann’s Vertigo score here.
Play count: 313
Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
