Portal:Horror/Selected biography archive/September 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was a highly influential director and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. He directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades, from the silent film era, through the invention of talkies, to the colour era. Hitchcock was among the most consistently successful and publicly recognizable directors in the world during his lifetime, and remains one of the best known and most popular directors of all time, famous for his expert and largely unrivaled control of pace and suspense throughout his movies.

He was born in England, where he began his directing career before working primarily in the United States from 1939 on, applying for citizenship in 1956. The "Master of Suspense", as he was commonly known, and his family lived in a mountaintop estate high above Scotts Valley, California from 1940 to 1972. He died of a heart attack in 1980.

Hitchcock's films draw heavily on both fear and fantasy, and are known for their droll humour. They often portray innocent people caught up in circumstances beyond their control or understanding. This often involves a transference of guilt in which the "innocent" character's failings are transferred to another character, and magnified. Another common theme is the basic incompatibility of men and women; Hitchcock's films often take a cynical view of traditional romance.

Rebecca was the only one of his films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, although four others were nominated. Hitchcock never won the Academy Award for Best Director. He was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in 1967, but never personally received an Academy Award of Merit.

Until the later part of his career, Hitchcock was far more popular with film audiences than with film critics, especially the elite British and American critics. In the late 1950s the French New Wave critics, especially Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and François Truffaut, were among the first to see and promote his films as artistic masterworks. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to whom they applied their auteur theory, which stresses the artistic authority of the director in the film-making process.

Through his fame, public persona, high degree of creative control and frequent return to favored themes, Hitchcock helped to transform the role of the director, which had previously been eclipsed by that of the producer. He is seen today as a director who managed to combine art and entertainment in a way very few have ever matched. His innovations and vision have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers, and actors. (continued...)