Alfred Hitchcock

Powerful portrait of a man…

drawn from life!

5.2.2021.
Kristina Sedlarevic, Master
Ästhetik
‘’In violently contrasted lighting, [Hitchcock] speaks: ‘’This film is unlike any
of my other films. There is no suspense. Nothing but the truth.’’ One must read
between the lines. The only suspense in The Wrong Man is that of chance itself.
The subject of this film lies less in the unexpectedness of events than in their
probability. With each shot, each transition, each composition, Hitchcock does
the only thing possible for the rather paradoxical but compelling reason that he
could do anything he liked.’’
Jean-Luc Godard
,,Hitchcock had been expressly directive to his cinematographer, Robert Burks, about the manner of shooting these settings: ,,I want it to look like it had been photographed
in New York in a style unmistakably documentary. . . . Perhaps you may not want to do this picture, Bob. I wouldn’t want the stark, colorless documentary treatment I
expect to reflect on your reputation as a photographer’’ (qtd. in Pomerance 63).
‘’This is Alfred Hitchcock speaking. In the past, I have given you many kinds
of suspense pictures. But this time, I would like you to see a different one. The
difference lies in the fact that this is a true story, every word of it. And yet it
contains elements that are stranger than all the fiction that has gone into many
of the thrillers that I've made before’’
-Alfred Hitchcock addressing the audiences at the beginning of the film
First transference

Reverse transference
Dissolve, cross fade

Psycho (1960)
Dissolve, cross fade
 Psycho (1960)

Psycho (shot from the trailer)

,,And Hitchcock is right to claim that The Wrong
Man is not a suspense film like his previous ones,
because it is the reverse. The suspense no longer even
stems from the fact that what one knew would
happen does happen, as in The Man Who Knew Too
Much, but on the contrary from the fact that what
one was afraid of happening does not finally
happen.’’
Jean-Luc Godard
Films in which an innocent man is
escaping (from the police or from a
different group of people):
The Lodger, 1926/1927
The 39 Steps, 1935Young and
Innocent, 1937/1938Saboteur, 1942
Spellbound, 1944/1945
Strangers on a Train, 1950/1951I
Confess, 1952/1953To Catch a Thief,
1954/1955The Wrong Man, 1956
North by Northwest 1958/1959
Frenzy, 1971/1972
Numerous other fi lms show aspects of
Hitchcock’s depiction of American life:
Foreign Correspondent (1940),
Saboteur (1942),
Shadow of a Doubt (1943),
Lifeboat (1944),
Spellbound (1945),
Notorious (1946),
Rope (1948),
Strangers on a Train (1951),
Rear Window (1954),
To Catch a Thief (1955),
The Trouble with Harry (1955),
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956),
Vertigo (1958),
North by Northwest (1959),
Psycho (1960),
The Birds (1963),
Marnie (1964),
Torn Curtain (1966)