Vertigo is the greatest motion picture of all time. Or so say the results of the latest round of respected film magazine Sight & Sound‘s long-running critics poll, in which Alfred Hitchcock’s James Stewart- and Kim Novak- (and San Francisco-) starring psychological thriller unseated Citizen Kane from the top spot. For half a century, Orson Welles’ directorial debut seemed like it would […]
When the writers (and future film makers) of the influential French film journal Cahiers du Cinema formulated what became known as “the auteur theory” in the late 1950s and early 60s, it caused a lot of controversy in cinematic circles. Simply put, it stated that the director was the prime mover, the “author” of the […]
David W. Griffith was the pioneering director who invented and introduced the original grammar of cinema as we know it today, but there are many who took the principles and developed them into an art form, and formed the grammar of cinema in different but influential ways. 1. Alfred Hitchcock It’s no wonder Alfred Hitchcock […]
In my childhood, one of the movies that made me fall in love with movies was “North by Northwest” (1959). To my young, dazzled eyes, this film had everything: color, excitement, suspense, romance, humor, handsome scenery and even handsomer stars. It grabbed me from the first moment and never let me go. It was the […]
Alfred Hitchcock is unquestionably the greatest director of suspense films in cinema history. His best films are marked by sequences of suspense that are memorable, exciting, engaging and cinematically magnificent. Hitchcock described the difference between suspense and surprise by giving the illustration of two men sitting at a table with a time bomb set to […]