La región de los grupos funcionales

Ernest Lehman one of Hitchcock’s collaborators, remembers a conversation he had with Hitchcock in one of the filmmaker’s favourite places, a restaurant.

During location shooting in New York, he took me to dinner at Christ Cella. He’d had a few martinis, and in a rare moment of emotional intimacy, he put his hand on mine and whispered, “Ernie, do you realize what we’re doing in this picture? The audience is like a giant organ that you and I are playing. At one moment we play this note on them and get this reaction, and then we play that chord and they react that way. And someday we won’t even have to make a movie – there’ll be

electrodes implanted in their brains, and we’ll just press different buttons and they’ll go ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaaah’ and we’ll frighten them, and make them laugh. Won’t that be wonderful?¹⁶⁸

Little did Hitchcock know of the virtual worlds that would later be constructed, allowing audiences to experience the most amazing sensations as if they were in a situation but without the danger. This is what audiences wanted and still do, thrills without danger or repercussions. Hitchcock gave them exactly what they wanted. Alfred Hitchcock began his career when the art of the moving picture was only in its nascent forms. Both he and his art form grew together. The culmination of his career left the world a little bit more wary of the things that lurk in our subconscious as well as things that go bump in the night.

168 SPOTO, D. 1983. The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. London: William Collins & Co. Ltd. p. 406

His career spanned sixty years and the result was fifty-three feature films, which are still as popular as they were in the era in which they were produced. Academics and students of film, like myself still decide to write dissertations and books on this man and his work.

He was an influential man whose methods influenced an entire generation of filmmakers.

We only have to look at Brian de Palma’s Sisters to see how this film in fact pays homage to the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. The remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho by Gus van Sant in itself was a very significant tribute to a man whom many filmmakers admire for his ingenuity and intelligence in reading audiences.

During the time I have been busy researching and writing this paper, many people have asked me why I even bothered to research up on such an ‘old’ and ‘out of date’ director.

I always smiled when I heard these comments before trying to condense into five minutes, three years worth of research and knowledge that I have acquired about Alfred Hitchcock and his audience manipulation techniques, that has firmly placed him among people whose artistry and ingenuity I admire. Upon telling people that many of the thriller conventions used by modern directors in contemporary films, to scare and thrill and ultimately manipulate audiences, were actually originated by Hitchcock, I usually receive baffled and I think mostly incredulous stares after all most young people really think that the great film directors include directors such as Martin Scorcese, Brian de Palma, and Steven Spielberg.

Hitchcock was a man of great insight, ingenuity and foresight. Although he was never awarded an Oscar by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he was awarded a Lifetime achievement award by the American Film Institute, where a superb banquet was held for him, including all the people he had worked with through his career. These people who included Bernard Herrmann, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman, congregated to honour a man who added greatly to the history and cannon of film work at large.

Hitchcock’s films have been translated into many different languages and are still shown in cinemas in countries all over the world thus making it obvious that Hitchcock’s manipulation of the audience and the audience’s enjoyment thereof, was not confined to any specific language.

One only needs to search for ‘Hitchcock’ on the Internet to find a myriad of web sites formed by ardent and dedicated fans of Hitchcock, his films and his genre. A testament to the enduring fascination that audiences share for his work.

It was my aim to construct the argument that Hitchcock, more than most directors, manipulated his audiences and always had every part of his films in his strict control.

Hopefully this has been achieved.

In conclusion I shall use the eloquent and articulate words of Alfred Hitchcock’s

biographer, Donald Spoto, who in his final thoughts in his critical novel The Art of Alfred Hitchcock wrote,

Obviously, the passion which a critic brings to the study of specific works of art reveals much about the critic himself…The act of interpretation, after all, interprets the interpreter to himself. In any case this writer has discovered as much about himself as about one artist’s work, and that is no small dividend.

Finis coronat opus – the end crowns the work, according to a curious old adage. But in a work of criticism, the end should only bring us back to the beginning, to the works of art themselves. If the reader is impelled to see again the films of Alfred Hitchcock I shall have considered my work successful.¹⁶⁹

169 SPOTO, D. 1977. The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. London: W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd. p. 525