REVIEW
He’s interested in mothers, he’s
interested in blondes, he’s
interested in dogs, all that stuff.
Ian: Trains. He likes trains.
Neil: There are more dogs than
you think. Catholic guilt is a
theme that crops up quite a bit.
Nick: One thing is fi nding
danger in every possible
situation. Even the safest thing,
staying in a hotel or waiting
around a cornfi eld for a bus,
there’s danger everywhere.
Neil: There’s lots of crazy stuff
happening to ordinary people.
Beth: Paranoid white men,
I would say.
Nick: Where? Where?
Beth: I completely concur that
he’s very skilled at taking the
things we imagine and making
them seamlessly very real.
That’s terrifying. The idea of
being alone with nowhere to
hide, is terrifying. As is marriage.Neil:Vertigo. A Level Film
Studies. Part of the syllabus
was Hitchcock. Our lecturer
showed usVertigoand I am
forever indebted to him for
that because I immediately
went off and found every
Hitchcock film I could.
Ian:I’m the only one who
didn’t study him here. I feel
like a fool. I was a fan of the
Movie Brats in the ’70s. De
Palma ripped him off in
every film, and Hitchcock
was a name I was familiar
with. The first film I saw was
Psycho. What do you think the
thematic preoccupations that
run through the work are?
Neil:Well, Hitchcock is
interesting because he’s got so
many thematic preoccupations.
He’s interested in marriage, you
get a very cynical impression of
marriage in Hitchcock films.Ian:When did you first
discover Alfred Hitchcock?
Nick:Probably just before
university. I wrote a really
pretentious thesis on Hitchcock.
The title was “Analysing the
role of genre in Hitchcock texts
of my choice”. It’s a grabber.
Ian:Before you saw any of
the films, you knew of
his reputation?
Nick:He works in one genre so
he’s quite easy to get a handle
on. He’s the thriller guy. That’s
what they called him: The
Master Of Thriller. They didn’t
call him that.
Beth:My dad, who’s a film
journalist, tried to push them
on me from an early age. Being
the rebel that I am, I pushed
right back. Now I love him.
Mostly. Well, I love his films.
Ian:What was the first
Hitchcock film you saw?
Alfred Hitchcock
Films
THE
RANKING
FourEmpirewriters.
Ten movies.
Ordered
definitively.OUR CRITICS
NEIL ALCOCK
Is writing a book on
Hitchcock. We suggested
using paper instead.NICK DE SEMLYEN
Hasn’t showered in
a motel since watching
Psycho.IAN FREER
Hasn’t showered
since watching
Psycho.BETH WEBB
Massive fan of Hitchcock’s
work. Less so of the
man himself.