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I. Alfred Hitchcock: One of the Greatest Directors of All Time

1. Known as “the Master of Suspense” Hitchcock is notably one of the most influential and extensively studied filmmakers in the history of cinema.

2. Alfred Hitchcock was also a brilliant technician who deftly blended sex, suspense and humor while creating a number of motifs and devices – most famously the MacGuffin – to advance his intricate plots in addition to being a talented director.

II. Life and Career

Life

1. Alfred Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, England on August 13, 1899. He was the youngest of three children born to William and Emma Jane Hitchcock. Over the years some have tried to suggest Hitchcock’s Catholicism as the source of the twisted themes he explored in his work. Film critics have traced his recurring cinematic motifs of guilt and fear to his Catholic sensibilities.

2. After attending a technical school at 15, Hitchcock spent the first years of his career as a draftsman, advertising designer, and writer. An interest in photography led to him working in London's film industry, first as a title card designer for silent movies and, just five years later, as a director.

Career

1. Hitchcock’s career began in the reign of Queen Victoria and ended in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, moving from London to Hollywood, from a title designer on silent movies to becoming one of the world’s most famous

directors. The first movie he directed was the silent Number 13 (1922); his last was the much noisier Family Plot (1976).

2. During his career, he created over fifty feature films in a career that saw not only the development of Hitchcock's own distinctive directorial style, but also landmark innovations in cinema. Hitchcock has been credited with pioneering many camera and editing techniques for peers and aspiring directors to emulate.

III. Honors and Awards

Honors

1. Hitchcock collected many professional accolades including two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, and five lifetime achievement awards. He was a five-time Academy Award nominee for Best Director and in 1940, his film Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture.

2. Hitchcock was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth in 1980, shortly before his death. A knighthood is a title that is given to a man by a British king or queen for his achievements or his service to his country.

Awards

1. Academy Awards, USA. 1968. Winner. Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. 1961. Nominee. Oscar. Best Director. Psycho (1960) Golden Globes, USA. Primetime Emmy Awards. BAFTA Awards. Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA.

2. In 2008, four of his movies were named in American Film Institute's Top 10 Mystery Films of all time: Dial M for Murder (No. 9), North by Northwest (No. 7), Rear Window (No. 3) and Vertigo (No. 1).

Critical Opinions/Reviews

Opinions

1. In 2012 when the film critics polled by Sight and Sound voted “Vertigo” the greatest film of all time, kicking Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” from a top spot it had enjoyed for decades. 

2. Wellesians bit their knuckles, and the rest of us scratched our heads. “Vertigo” is not Hitchcock’s best, but rather, with its lush morbidity, somnolent pace, poor box office and relative scarcity of jokes, the Hitchcock film for those who most wish he were French. Flops make film critics feel useful — they are the film-crit equivalent of the deserving poor. What else can you do with a gleaming hit maker except overpraise his misses?

Reviews

1. Since his death in 1980, books have multiplied like gravestones, now numbering in the hundreds, with his biographers falling into two camps. There are those who side with Donald Spoto in “The Dark Side of Genius” (1983), who had him pegged as a troubled man whose deepest creative energies were coupled with fear, lust, sadism and a thoroughly unwholesome interest in his actresses — a creep with a movie camera. 

2. A man of “exaggeratedly delicate sensibilities,” according to John Houseman, driven by fear, guilt and loathing of his own body, yet dainty to the point of effeminacy in his gestures and attitudes, wielding his bulk with the grace of Fatty Arbuckle. “Never ruffled, never gave any sign of being worried, was always in control,” Karl Malden said of working with the director.

III. Conclusion

Alfred Hitchcock. No introduction necessary really. One of the greatest directors of 20th Century cinema, to this day he is still a huge influence to directors and film students around the world; his films just as popular with audiences now as back when Cary Grant was scrabbling across rooftops on the

Riviera or running away from malicious biplanes. Motel owners are still very much on the fence about him however.

Annotated Bibliography

Alfred Hitchcock. (n.d.). This website provided information in regards to the early life and legacy

of Alfred Hitchcock. This website provided early life information and details about his early education. It provided essential data integral to research for my final research paper.

Alfred Hitchcock. (n.d.). This website provided information in regards to the various awards

Alfred Hitchcock was nominated.

Alfred Hitchcock's Early Career. (2015, August 13). Retrieved from

This website provided information in regards to the early life and career of Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock. (2016, May 24). This website provided information in regards to the various

Oscar nominations for various Alfred Hitchcock movies. As I stated in my proposal, Hitchcock never won an Oscar, but this website provided details in regards to the many nominations.

Alfred Hitchcock: TV Guide. (n.d.). This website provided additional information pertaining to

Alfred Hitchcock’s biography. Although there were many sources that provided biographical information pertaining to Hitchcock’s life and career, the TV Guide provided some unusual information.

Mystery. (n.d.). This website provided information about Alfred Hitchcock’s films that ended up

in the top ten mystery films of all times. This was no small feat as there were many mystery films eligible for this category. Once again, this proves why Hitchcock is one of the greatest directors of all time.

The Man Who Knew His Faith: The Catholicism of Alfred Hitchcock. (n.d.). This website

provided a wealth of information in regards to Alfred Hitchcock’s Catholic faith and how it impacted his filmmaking.