Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Despair Alfred Hitchcock

Good Essays
349 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Despair Alfred Hitchcock
In the short film Despair, Alfred Hitchcock's filming techniques are very evident. Alfred Hitchcock is known for using many different styles of filming which have influenced many directors since the early 1900s. The director of Despair uses Hitchcock's technique to build tension, add action, and keep the viewer on the edge of their seat. Despair is a film of Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover." The first example in the film is camera is not a camera. Jeffrey Michael Bays says, "The camera should take on human qualities and roam around playfully looking for something suspicious in the room" (2). He later says, “Without sound, filmmakers had to create ways to tell the story visually in a succession of images and ideas" (2). Like Hitchcock, the director of Despair uses this technique to add suspense as the actress approaches the letter on the table. Using this technique help the build to the major climax of the story. The next example used is keep the story simple. According to Bays, "The key to creating that raw Hitchcock energy is by using simplistic, linear stories that the audience can easily follow" (4).The director of Despair does this by keeping the film short and continuously moving. The plot is easy to follow which makes "things griping to the audience" (4). Another example of Hitchcock's style used in Despair is frame for emotion. The director uses this as the actress is running from the house toward the car by using a close up shot of her face. Viewers can almost feel the fear within the actress because of her eyes. Bay's says, "Emotion comes directly from the actor's eyes" (1). The director of Despair does this very well. There were many other Hitchcock techniques used throughout the film Despair, but these were three of the most important ones. If the director had chosen not to use the techniques stated above, the film would have lacked suspense and a build to the major climax. As one can see the director of Despair did a great job in incorporating Hitchcock’s unique styles and techniques.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    This report is about how films work. In this report, I will give examples from the book and movie called ‘The Outsiders’. I will be using examples from ‘The Outsiders’ because the film has a lot of examples on camera movements, for example, close-ups, camera turning around, downward views, colored screen, camera edits, etc., and how films work.…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    CMNS 304 Notes

    • 5782 Words
    • 19 Pages

    Hitchcock is leaving you with your own imagination. When the camera track’s back, you imagine what is going on behind the windows…

    • 5782 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The only sound playing is the rapid flapping of the soft black feathers. It feels as though it will never cease. All that is shown is a black, shiny wall of furious birds. It traps viewers and develops a feeling of helplessness. They feel as though they are suffocating from torn feathers cluttering their airways even though their rational side tells them none of it’s real. This is what audience members of the movie, “The Birds”, reported feeling during the immersive experience. Some felt so claustrophobic that they had panic attacks. Cinema: the art of tapping in to an audience’s deepest emotions and using it to provoke a specific sensation. Few are able to master this fine art, however, “The Birds” by Hitchcock is a perfect example of a…

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the movie, The Birds, Hitchcock was very impressive in his dramatic techniques because of the tension it built in various scenes made this film accomplish it horror genre in addition to suspense. Hitchcock had fooled viewers thinking the film was comedy because of the use of…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Alfred Hitchcock was an amazing director and his films have lived on and are still thriving today due to the techniques he used in his films and the way he created them. He was known for taking the least probable scenarios and turning them into a masterpiece just by playing with light and form or angles. Some of these films are Psycho, Perfect Crime, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Rear Window. At first it was quite difficult to pinpoint a particular film to choose as he used brilliant techniques in all of them. However, I have chosen to talk about Rear Window. This is because the fact that the whole film occurs in the same setting and still holds our interest is very hard to do but he was able to by using diverse camera angles and playing with lighting.…

    • 1579 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    No matter what film you watch or examine, there will always be details that you as an audience member will miss. You may think that these details were too small and therefore they were insignificant. Additionally, these aspects provide the audience with a different view and an altered outlook of the film and its characters. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is filled with different motifs creating different emotions within the viewer. However, no motif in Psycho was more visually obvious than that of the birds. Hitchcock included birds all throughout the movie and this motif, these symbols came in the shape of: physical birds, names, decorations and many more. While it was subtle, it created a sense of tension and stress amongst the characters in Psycho.…

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fear, terror and suspense are the most vivid emotions created by Poe's stories and by Hitchcock's films. Several themes are common to both: the madness that exists in the world, the paranoia caused by isolation which guides people's actions, the conflict between appearance and reality along with the double aspect of the human nature, and the power of the dead over the living. Not only the themes are similar in both men's work but also the details through which a story is written or shown. The similar themes and narrative techniques can be seen clearly in 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and in Psycho.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Film and Vertigo

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958, is a psychological thriller that is said to be Hitchcock's most personal and revealing film. Vertigo was a failure in the box office, but later became to be the premier of pure cinema. Through the use of formal elements such as lighting, color, spacing, and sound Hitchcock brings the film off of the screen and into the audience's head. The themes presented in Vertigo: love, sex, obsession, and guilt play a far more important role in telling the story than the acting. These are common Hitchcockian themes, which culminate all within this one film.…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Wells, AJ. “Hitchcock – Good vs. Evil”. Cinemarollling 9 Mar 2009. 30 June 2012. http://cinemaroll.com/cinamarolling/higchcock-good-vs-evil.…

    • 1851 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Alfred Hitchcock was known for “treating actors like cattle” meaning that he was an authoritative director who found it most useful to create nearly flawless films with actors who he felt he could order around. This proved to be an efficient way to direct because after only a few years of directing, he was offered a seven year contract in the Hollywood. Hitchcock and his wife moved to the U.S. in 1939 where they spent the remainder of their lives. It was with 20th Century Fox that Hitchcock trademarked his suspense and gallows humor genres but in the 1950s, he moved to Paramount Pictures. It is with Paramount that he directed both Rear Window and Vertigo.…

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    leave Casablanca. An employee of the cafe bring a check to a man seated at a…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Some people say Tim Burton is crazy; however, I think he is a genius. The way he…

    • 275 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Renowned as ‘the master of suspense’ Hitchcock achieves tension and suspense by taking innocent, ordinary characters and placing them in a situation beyond their control where a vulnerable victim is murdered. The combination of thriller with crime is illustrated through the use of several cinematic devices such as sound and lighting. Throughout the final scenes where Jefferies is confronted by Thorwald, the re-curing flash of the camera light bulb which dissolves into complete darkness heightens suspense and the anticipated thrill within Hitchcock’s respective audience, reflecting his subtle subversion of the genre to suit his purpose. The juxtaposition of silence and urgent whispering with the digetic booming sounds of Thorwald’s menacing footsteps forebodes the characterisation employed by Hitchcock to enable the establishment of a villain detective reflecting how the text engages with crime and its associated social and moral…

    • 1460 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Life of Alfred Hitchcock "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible". Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first celebrity director. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899 in Heytonstone, England. His early life could be compared to a Charles Dickens novel full of hard work.…

    • 2474 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alfred Hitchcock, also known as, “The Master of Suspense”, was a director to a variety of award winning films. Many Hitchcock movies will be noticeably inspired by numerous paintings, including the work of iconic artist Edward Hopper. Hopper, born in New York, was well known for his realist paintings. Comparing the paintings and films, one will see the similarities displayed between the two. Alfred Hitchcock and Edward Hopper are linked by creating an eerie mood through their use of lighting, composition, and viewpoint. Both Hitchcock and Hopper tend to use dark lighting with shadows as well as isolating a small group of people seen from an ‘outside looking in’ point of view.…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays