Cinema’s most timeless director, according to Alfred Hitchcock: “The Columbus of the screen”
Widely regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed a rather prolific career during which he significantly altered the direction of various genres, most notably thriller films and horror, of course.
He ushered in a new era of scary movies, completely betraying the audience’s trust and expectations with the sudden murder of the main character in Psycho, while his propensity for crafting simmering tension and intrigue defined everything from The 39 Steps to Vertigo. Hitchcock was a master of enticing his audiences into totally enveloping stories, preoccupying himself with recurring themes such as guilt, obsession, and sexuality, often framing his subjects with a rather voyeuristic lens.
Hitchcock really revolutionised cinema, his career taking off in the 1930s following his initial attempts at filmmaking during the silent era. He innovated the medium with unique editing techniques (like the long takes of Rope) and unconventional storytelling devices, whether he was using a dolly zoom to draw attention or emphasising the audience’s role in the film as an active voyeur.
While Hitchcock clearly had a knack for conjuring up ideas that few had seen before, he owed much of his interest in innovating the medium to a certain filmmaker, albeit one steeped in controversy, having been inspired by those he classed as timeless, considering them to be worthy of studying decades on if their work actually endured as something innovative and daring.
For that reason, he revered DW Griffith, the director behind one of the most racist movies ever made, The Birth of a Nation, which, despite its undeniably disgusting message and its release aiding a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, somehow became the first movie to be shown at the White House.
The thing is, Griffith conveyed this vile message of white supremacy by using innovative cinematic techniques that ranged from close-up shots to a musical score. No one had seen a movie made in quite this way, and cinema would never be the same again – it’s just a terrible shame that these groundbreaking techniques were used to tell such a horrific story.
In spite of the horrors communicated by The Birth of a Nation, many filmmakers have highlighted the genius of Griffith as a cinematic pioneer, and Hitchcock was one of his biggest champions. I wouldn’t call a movie about white supremacy “timeless,” but the Rear Window director certainly thought so.
“The classical cutting techniques dating back to DW Griffith have stood the test of time and still prevail today,” he told François Truffaut. Seeing the silent filmmaker as “the Columbus of the screen,” he continued, “My chases combine what I got from [authors Poe and GK Chesterton] with what I got from Griffith.”
By taking influence from movies like The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, Hitchcock was able to craft his own cinematic world that would subsequently inspire generations after him. Luckily, the filmmaker didn’t pack his films with quite the same levels of overt racism, although he was guilty of using blackface in the 1937 film Young and Innocent, don’t forget.
