Guillermo del Toro’s favourite Alfred Hitchcock movies: “A side of him that is pure melodrama”
Alfred Hitchcock had such a profound influence on cinema that it would be impossible to name all the filmmakers who have been inspired by him. Any time you find yourself gripping the arm rests of your chair or digging your nails into your palm in sheer suspense, Hitchcock is at least partially responsible. Then there is the dolly zoom, an effect so easy to achieve yet powerful for the audience that it’s been used in everything from Jaws to Pulp Fiction.
While it’s impossible to identify every filmmaker who has been inspired by the Master of Suspense, some have credited him outright. John Woo, a pioneering figure in Hong Kong action cinema, said that he learned everything there is to know about suspense from the director, while Paul Thomas Anderson has stated that he based his 2018 drama Phantom Thread on Hitchcock’s 1940 mystery, Rebecca.
Another filmmaker who is happy to attribute some of his personal style to Hitchcock is Guillermo del Toro. The Oscar-winning director behind such fantastical gems as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water reveres Hitchcock for several reasons, and none of them have to do specifically with suspense.
Speaking to Collider in 2023, del Toro was asked which of his movies he would recommend a person start with. “It depends,” he said. “To me, the thing is, my preoccupations and my images go from one genre that is gigantic to something that is very intimate. When you study filmmakers you admire, like Hitchcock, Hitchcock has a side of him that is pure melodrama. The best one of those is Notorious, in my opinion. Then he has intimate, really psychological and dark movies, the best one of which is Shadow of a Doubt. Then he has spectacle movies the best one of which are arguably either North by Northwest or The Birds. And so on and so forth.”
Hitchcock is rarely credited for his range as a filmmaker, and when he is, it’s usually when his films are categorised into distinct periods, such as his pre-Hollywood era in the UK that was full of tightly wound suspense but minimal glamour and his Technicolor Hollywood period in which the costumes and glitz were almost as important as the plot. But as del Toro alluded, Hitchcock was doing much more than suspense. His melodramatic movies, like Rebecca, Notorious, and Suspicion are some of his greatest films, and few remember that he was at times so avant-garde in his filmmaking that 1945’s Spellbound features a lengthy dream sequence created by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.
In contrast, his spectacle movies became so light and frothy at one stage that the two films he made in 1955, To Catch a Thief and The Trouble with Harry, fall more into the genre of romantic comedy than thriller. And then, there’s Psycho, which pioneered the horror genre with jump-scares and one of the creepiest closing shots in film history.
Though he’ll always be known as the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock’s filmography is a lot more diverse than most of us give it credit for.
