twentieth century. In a career spanning six decades, Hitchcock made 53 films, the best of
which are at once suspenseful, exciting, disturbing, funny and romantic. The so-called ‘master
of suspense’ pioneered many of the techniques of the thriller genre, and remains highly
influential to this day. He was one of the first directors to portray psychological processes in
film narrative. However, his films were initially more popular with audiences than with critics,
and it was not until the latter part of his career, largely due to directors of the French New
Wave, such as François Truffaut, that his genius was recognized.

Hitchcock was born in 1899 in Leytonstone, East London into a Cockney Catholic

family. He was educated at boarding schools, where he remained until the death of his father
in 1913. In 1920, Hitchcock obtained a full-time job designing film titles at Islington Studios,
which was owned by the American production company Famous Players-Lasky. While there,
he endeavoured to learn as much as he could about the film business. Within 3 years of
starting his job at the studio, Hitchcock became an assistant director and, in 1925, a director.
The following year, Hitchcock married Alma Reville, his assistant director, with whom he had
a daughter, Patricia, in 1928. During these early years of his career, Hitchcock made some of
his best films, such as The 39 Steps, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. In the late 1930s,
the British film industry was in a financial crisis; Hitchcock took up a contract with
Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, and took his family to the United States in 1939.

Hitchcock once remarked that “television has done much for psychiatry by spreading

information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.” During much of Hitchcock’s
career, Freud’s ideas were dominant, and although Hitchcock was skeptical of psychoanalysis
(as he was of other explanations for human behaviour), Freudian concepts and motifs recur in
many of his films.

Picture 2.

Alfred Hitchcock