Influences Report

Influences on Hitchcock

Report

 

 

A key part in Hitchcock’s influences for his films was the German Expressionism. A Number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the first world were reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920’s. German expressionism films produced in the Weimar Republic immediately following World War 2 not only encapsulated the socio-political contexts in which they were created, but also rework the intrinsically modern problems of self-reflectivity, spectacle and identity.

 

Another influence of his was the Kuleshov effect. This editing effect demonstrated by Russian film-maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910 and 1920’s. Kuleshov cut an actor with shots of 3 different things –soup –girl in a coffin –pretty woman on a sofa. The footage of an actor was the same expressionless gaze, yet the audience raved his performance, saying first he looked hungry, then sad, then lustful. These examples further illustrate the power of editors as storytellers. The data gathered with the Kuleshov effect were heavily used by Russian film makers, especially in respect to the soviet montage.

 

The soviet montage was another influence of Hitchcock’s. This is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing. Although soviet filmmakers in the 1920’s disagree about how exactly to view the montage, Sergei Eistentein marked a note of accord in “A Dialectic Approach to the Film Form”. Informal terms, this style of editing offers discontinuity in graphic qualities, violations of the 180 degree rule, and the creation of impossible spatial matches. It is not concerned with the depiction of a comprehensive spatial or temporal continuity system. It draws attention to temporal ellipses because changes between shots are obvious, less fluid and the non-seamless. Methods of montage:

·         Metric – where the editing follows a specific number of frames, cutting to the next image no matter what

·         Rythmic – includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit

·         Tonal – uses the emotional meaning of the shots, to elicit s reaction from the audience

·         Overtonal/assopciational – the accumulation of metric, rhythmic and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract meaning

·         Intellectual – uses of shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual

 

With these in mind, some of Hitchcock’s earliest film includes:

·         The farmer’s wife

·         The pleasure garden

·         Champagne

·         The lodger: a story of the London fog

·         Easy virtue

·         The ring

·         The Manxman

·         Downhill