Alfred Hitchcock

Albert Hitchcock was born and brought up in Leytonstone, East London on August 1899. He was a British film director and created many well known suspence, Thriller movies such as Psycho (1960), Notorious (1946), Rare Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) etc.

Alfred Hitchcock had many special elements that he used within his films to make it as suspencful as possible. He used ‘the bomb theory’ throughout a lot of his films. The bomb theory is when there is something is in the film that the characters cannot see but the audience can and the audience would be screaming at the screen and at the character that there is something there and they are in danger. For example there is a bomb underneath a table and the characters cannot see it and the audience knows the bomb is under the table in the room but the characters do not know and the characters’ lives are in danger and the audience would be screaming at the characters saying ‘the bomb is under the table!!’. This would make the audience scared for the characters in the film.

The bomb theory appeared in Psycho quite numerous times, especially when the woman was in the shower and we coul see the sillouette of the killer but she cannot see it and the audience would probably say ‘HE’S BEHIND YOU!!’ but the character cannot hear which makes thje audience scared, frustrated and tense.

Another element is  that he placed things that made him scared when he was younger in his films. Alfred Hitchcock was scared of police men and the ‘clang’ of doors as he was quite terrified of being trapped somewhere where there was no escape.

Thriller movie posters

In Mrs Warners lesson, we have been analysing thriller posters and seeing the usual detail and aspects within the posters that usually appear in other thriller posters, and we have learnt that most thriller movie posters are quite similar. Here is one of the posters we were analysing.

This is a thriller movie poster from a film called ‘From Hell’ a costume drama type movie based on the events of Jack the Ripper.

The poster has low key lighting which suggests that it’s a dark movie and is quite scary. The text ‘From Hell’ is significant as the word ‘hell’ is is bold, which emphasis’s the matter of something or someone coming out of hell. The man in the picture is Johnny Depp and he seems more of the main character as he is infront of the female character and he seems more dominant in a wat because the light is on him and he is infront. The female character looks vulnerable as she looks quite scared and innocent due to her pale, flawless face. She is also standing behind Johnny Depp which suggests that she might be in danger and he is protecting her from something which shows she is less dominant. Johnny Depp looks quite serious, determined and strong which could suggest he’s the ‘hero’ figure.

The red in the poster connotes blood, death, evil and it’s quite ‘hell’ like. The red could be a slash of blood and the little sillouette of the man could symbolise that he is the cause of the ‘evil, death and blood’. The red slash could also be some sort of opening and the man is coming out ‘from hell’ and he might be committing evil events.