His films are so distinctive they can be identified almost immediately.
Working from the broadest canvas (an airplane chasing Cary Grant across an endless cornfield in North by Northwest) to the smallest (a shower, a maniac, a butcher knife, and Janet Leigh in Psycho), Alfred Hitchcock developed a signature style and became known as the “master of suspense.”
Hitchcock came to be the first director to become a genuine celebrity, largely because of his own efforts at self-promotion. The director often acted like his films sprung fully formed from his mind with the celluloid functioning only as a transcription of his personal vision.
In reality, Hitchcock scholars and fans recognize the fundamental importance of his all-too-overlooked collaborators like costume designer Edith Head and composer Bernard Herrmann.
The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art is devoting this fall quarter to examining the myth of Hitchcock as the singular auteur through a museum gallery full of Hitchcock’s archival photos, production sketches, and more.
Block Cinema curator Will Schmenner hopes to highlight the visionaries who were Hitchcock’s collaborators.
“Hitchcock is one of the 20th century’s great artists,” Schmenner says. “I’ve been researching Hitchcock for the exhibition for about three years and have had a chance to go through hundreds of drawings and documents from his papers at the Margaret Herrick Library and the British Film Institute.”
To complement the gallery exhibition, Schmenner has compiled a programming calendar of thirty Hitchcock films, which will last throughout fall quarter. Visitors can now see one of his films and then visit the gallery full of production material to better understand the vision behind the movie.
“The movies are (just one) part of the exhibition,” Schmenner says.
He has also scheduled several film scholars to give lectures before screenings including Tom Gunning for The Trouble with Harry and Jonathan Rosenbaum for Rear Window.
Hitchcock’s films have already been endlessly studied and dissected by film scholars. Is it essential then, to devote an entire quarter to a director who’s already been so thoroughly researched? No, says RTVF Professor Chuck Kleinhans.
“Hitchcock is the most overrated director in the canon,” Kleinhans says. “The best single thing that could be done to advance film studies would be to have a 20-year moratorium on writing about Hitchcock. After 20 years we could look at him afresh and more reasonably evaluate his place in the canon.”
RTVF professor Scott Curtis is teaching a course on Hitchcock this fall and will be hosting a gallery talk before Block’s screening of Vertigo on Nov 29. He says Block’s festival is necessary because Hitchcock is the primary originator of the thriller genre.
“If the point of the exhibit is to challenge the idea of the ‘visionary’ director and to emphasize the collaborative nature of filmmaking, then Hitchcock – the darling of the ‘auteur’ theory and a great promoter of his own ability to do it all on his own – is the perfect director to re-examine,” Curtis says.
If Hitchcock were alive, he might not be too pleased that the Block Museum seeks to unravel his careful self-promotion. But at least now, film students and fans have a chance to place his films in a more appropriate context, paying tribute to the collaborators as well as to the master.?
Communication junior Christian Blauvelt is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
