Modelling Values and Alfred Hitchcock

Abstract

If carving values reign in Ford it would seem apt to assign modelling values to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. There seems to be an open-and-shut case for seeing the two directors as opposites in terms of their subject-matter and style though they have some things in common. Although Hitchcock was British and did not spend his entire career in Hollywood, moving there in 1939 after completing some important British films, he is the director who most commentators would agree without much dissension shares artistic status with Ford in the Hollywood tradition. His status as a so-called ‘auteur’, compared with many other directors, is now generally agreed and, unlike Ford, his popularity and fame have not diminished with audiences and critics alike. On the contrary, as Ford’s reputation declines, Hitchcock’s grows and flourishes with even gallery art shows dedicated to his influence on artists.l Even more than Ford he seems to have constructed an aesthetics and thematics all of his own, largely because he has remained within the same, albeit broad, genre of the dramatic suspense thriller, sometimes slipping into ‘horror’ and light comedy. This chapter cannot bear the weight, as in the discussion of Ford above, of anything like a full account of his work. He was prolific and ‘masterpieces’ abound. He has attracted varied critical approaches — Wood, Durgnat, Rothman, Modelski, Mulvey, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Bellour.2 Like Ford’s, his work straddles the introduction of sound and colour.