Hitchcock was a genius in many regards, but perhaps above all others was his ability to conjure a genuine mystery. Films like Vertigo, Psycho, and Strangers on a Train were perfect examples of maintaining suspense through characters who were morally ambiguous. This uncertainty about a character was a kind of bargaining tool for the audience. It asked them to…
Tag: hitchcock
What a (Kinda) Horrific Year
It’s near enough Halloween for people to bust out their old copies of Halloween Town or any of the Saw movies and settle in for the strange American tradition of scaring yourself for kicks. The fall usually brings a host of films up for Oscar contention, but not before the last remains of cinematic waste make their Halloween…
Split is M. Night Shyamalan’s Love Letter to Hitchcock
Back in film school, I ended up watching a lot of films from a variety of directors. I think it was good to have that kind of exposure to all different kinds of cinema. That being said, we never spent a lot of time focusing on the work of directors. Auteur theory was drilled into our…
