Yeah, this is a guy who needs no introduction.

But because we're Shmoop, we'll introduce him anyway.

Alfred Hitchcock is arguably the most influential American director of all time. Certainly he's one of the biggest names in classical Hollywood cinema. Four of his films are on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Best American Films of all time, and his influence can be seen in just about every suspense film ever made. Directors all over the globe idolized him.

Oh, but Alfed Hitchcock never won the Oscar for Best Directing.

That's right—the man who would come to be called the "Master of Suspense" was nominated five times for Best Director…but never won. AFI Lifetime Achievement Award? Sure. Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy? Yep. Knighted by the Queen? Uh-huh. But even the Directors' Guild of America nominated him and passed him by six times for Best Director, settling for giving him another Lifetime Achievement Award in 1968.

Maybe suspense movies were seen as too low-brow? Who knows?

The Beginnings

Anyway, Hitchcock got his start in the biz in his native England. Directing a series of silent movies—this was before the sound era—Hitchcock built his reputation on the thrills, chills, and even the occasional shrieks that he elicited from audiences. His films—with highly appropriate titles like Murder! (1930)—were about, well, murder and other kinds of mayhem, but they always made room for intrigue and romance. These were slasher movies before there were slasher movies, and from the beginning they were meticulously made. These films and Hitch's first talkies, made in England, did so well at the box office so well that they earned him an invitation to cross the Atlantic.

Hitchcock brought with him a new film sensibility and visual style. His very first American film, Rebecca (1940), won the Oscar for Best Picture. In the 1940s, he brought a new, suspense-filled cinematic experience to bigger and bigger audiences stateside and beyond. In films like Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), and Rope (1948), Hitch honed his technique.

But it was during the next decade that Hitch's career really took off. The films that he made in the 1950s, including North by Northwest, are still worshipped the world over by film snobs and popcorn-consuming entertainment-lovers alike. Film buffs love these movies, which include classics like Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960), not only for the stories they tell but also for the innovative film techniques they deploy.

Alfred Hitchcock's John Hancock

Hitchcock had a signature look to his films: the dramatic shadows and unexpected camera angles; close-up reaction shots to draw the audience into the characters' emotions; filming strange events in familiar locations. (Head over to our "Production Design" section for more info about some of NXNW's more memorable camera work.)

He had his favorite themes, too: the person wrongly accused; the mysterious blonde; guilt, obsession, quirky characters, dark humor, mistaken identity, and of course, murder. In all his films, strange things happened to ordinary people. The idea was that the ordinary world can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye, and that we live under a constant threat of danger that we don't really recognize. In Hitch's universe, the world isn't as rational or as safe as it might seem to be.

It's all deliciously unsettling.

The Suspense Is Killing Us

But it wasn't just camera angles, elaborate and suspenseful set pieces and plot twists that made his films masterpieces. Hitchcock knew how to use these elements to manipulate the emotions of the audience. Every camera angle, choice of lighting, sound, or wardrobe was his way of speaking to the audience to create a specific feeling (source). Or, as he put it, "I enjoy playing the audience like a piano" (source).

Hitchcock once famously described the difference between shock and suspense. To truly engage the audience, he believed, you had to provide them with information.

Here's the example:

Imagine some people sitting around a table discussing baseball. Five minutes into the conversation, a bomb under the table goes off and blows everyone up.

…Okay, you've given the audience a few moments of shock.

What Hitch would do is show the audience the bomb under the table that's set to go off in 5 minutes; place a clock in the room so the audience can see the time ticking away. The audience is involved.They're thinking, "Don't talk about baseball—there's a bomb under the table!" Instead of a few seconds of shock, they've had five minutes of nail-biting suspense.

…That's what Hitch was after.

If you're interested in learning more about Master of Suspense, you're in luck. A 2003 survey counted eighty-seven books and hundreds of articles of Hitchcock scholarship. Colleges have entire courses devoted to his films (source).

When Hitchcock won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the AFI in 1979, he jokingly said that it must mean he was going to die soon (source). And he died the next year at the age of 80, leaving behind an unparalleled body of work and many sleepless nights for his audiences.

No one will ever again take a shower in a motel again without a twinge of anxiety.