The British director and filmmaker Sir Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) is considered one of the masters in the movie industry. Starting his career in Britain, Hitchcock migrated to the USA in 1939 and specialized in the thriller genre.
He was a backstage expert and used experimentation to find creative ways that would engage the audience. Engagement is one of the key factors for a movie's success and his knowledge about the movie's fascination made him a master of special effects as well. And he still ranks the top of the best special effects specialist, even if consider that today we have the high-technology as a cinema ally.
Hitchcock has used solutions that today would be considered amateur or naïve, but nothing has been improvised. When we say experimentation, we are using the scientific sense of that word, but in an artistic way. He was concerned about how things would appear on screen and if they would be appealing to the audience. So before shooting the scenes, he has probed them in the backstage in an empiric method, just like a scientist.
Of course, black and white films were easier to delude the audience, but Hitchcock hasn’t lost his power to engage audience, even after the colored era. And he wasn’t afraid to explain how he has reached such success, as he used to give interviews explaining how to make a movie. For example, after Psycho’s (1960) memorable shower scene became a Film’s History landmark, Hitchcock explained that he used chocolate syrup, because it was more convincing on screen than other materials. And he has chosen to shot that movie in black and white because he knew the power of that technique, which have substituted since the late 1930’s.
