Hitchcock once said, "Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual." Take this comment and apply it to all of the movies I've just reviewed.
Each one of those movies feature some fear existing in the human mind--to use an obvious example, a fear of heights in "Vertigo". That's one, but what about the other more subtler fears in the other movies? That's up to you to find out.
Hitchcock's movies aren't just about fear, though. They're about individuation, about people and about emotions. In a way, Hitchcock's movies are almost like fairy tales. They're not set in magic forests or in faraway kingdoms--but they play with the same things that fairy tales do. The morality of a set of characters with intriguing backgrounds thrust into an intriguing situation, while using human fears as a device to drive the plot forwards. The result is occasionally tragic, but then, not all fairy tales end with "happily ever after" and neither do all movies. Alfred Hitchcock is one the Shakespeares of the screen.
I would like to wish a happy 111th birthday to Mr. Hitchcock. His films and his style of directing have inspired me greatly. I hope I could manage to share some of that inspiration through my comments of his films. Some of the finest films ever made. Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock--and happy Friday the 13th to all!
Quote source:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000033/bio (Alfred Hitchcock Biography)
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