August 13, 2017: Happy Birthday, Mr. Hitchcock

And still relevant to filmmakers today. Christopher Nolan on his latest hit, Dunkirk:
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“My idea was that, instead of trying to explain through dialogue why we should care about them, we use the language of suspense — we use the language of the Hitchcock thriller — to create immediate empathy with the people on-screen by virtue of their physical situations,” he says.

In prepping Dunkirk, Nolan told the Los Angeles Times that he screened Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, then concluded, “OK, we don’t want to do anything like that.” Thus there are no blood and guts in his war movie and no soldiers kissing sweethearts goodbye. Instead, Nolan re-ran Hitchcock and opted for other devices to touch his filmgoers.

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Well, there you go -- a respected modern filmmaker electing to go with Hitchcock rather than Spielberg as his muse. I doubt he intended to insult Steve, but all these years out Hitchcock seems far more formative and influential than Spielberg. To Spielberg's deteriment, his great "child-like genre films" of the 70s and 80s seemed to have led to a bunch of WORSE child-like genre films made by less talented people. But Hitchcock is a master of style and narrative."

I will say this: "Saving Private Ryan"(my favorite film of 1998), opens with that gruesome D-Day sequence that used a new kind of photographic technique soon used in "Gladiator" and other films. I don't know it that was Spielberg's invention or his DP's, but it "stuck as a cinematic technique."

“No examination of cinematic suspense and visual storytelling would be complete without Hitchcock, and his technical virtuosity in ‘Foreign Correspondent’s portrayal of the downing of a plane at sea provided inspiration for much of what we attempted in ‘Dunkirk,'” Nolan said.

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That plane crash at sea is one of the great Hitchcock set-pieces -- and pretty much his first in America -- and it IS fantastic, both in the vulnerability of the initial flying, the diagonal plummet of the plane tossing people around like dolls as they struggle upwards -- and then that water crashing through the cockpit window!

Here, the Master of Suspense influenced not only the thriller, but the disaster movie as well. Plus: Titanic(the walls of water crashing in on the ship's captain from all sides via windows). And this scene has been homage in the plane crash in "Cast Away" and the yacht sinking in "Wolf of Wall Street,' to name but two.

Oh, and Dunkirk does it too. I've seen Dunkirk. More on that "upthread."

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Hitchcock's influence is obvious on directors like Scorcese, Spielberg, and the Coens, and Nolan continues this tradition.
Whatever one thinks of Nolan's films, and they can be polarizing, Hitchcock still remains a huge influence on today's filmmakers, and likely will for a long time to come.

Brian DePalma said it best: "Dealing with Hitchcock is like dealing with Bach - he wrote every tune that was ever done. Hitchcock thought up practically every cinematic idea that has been used and probably will be used in this form."

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I think DePalma's on the mark here. DW Griffith used to get this praise, but he's too far back in time and he has that Birth of a Nation problem.

Hitchcock's stories are exciting and relevant today...so we end up getting the "film school lessons" EVEN AS we are still entertained and kept in suspense.

(Hey, EC, how ya doin'?)

Great, Gubbio, except most of my posts disappear here now. I think since I announced it...somebody's out to do it all the time to me.

Maybe some other board?

PS I tried to answer jay440 above...POOF...gone.