Horror King Hitchcock - Great And Terrible

The biographies of some great people seem at first glance to be a collection of anecdotal incidents. It does not immediately occur to me that this "weirdo" is a leading figure and a recognized classic in his profession. And very few people will think that his talent should be almost genetically associated with the unusualness of not only creativity, but also the psyche. And the "days of past jokes" is not a whim, but a manifestation of the psychopathological aspects of his personality.

Diagnostic guess

Psychopathic personality development with obsessive and phobic manifestations and impaired drives.

roots of horror

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899–1980) is a British and American filmmaker and producer known for his shocking effects in his thrillers. This genius of cinematic directing did not inherit any creative genes: grandfather and grandmother were illiterate, mother and father "also did not shine with intelligence."

Alfred's childhood cannot be called careless. Once, at the age of four or five, for a minor offense, the father sent the boy to the local police station with a note in which he asked him to lock his son in a cell for a few minutes. That is what the executive head of the site did, moralizingly remarking: "This is how we do with disobedient children." Subsequently, Hitchcock was afraid of the police all his life (therefore he never drove a car), and the experienced subconscious fear of an unfair accusation and possible persecution was reflected in many of his films.

In 1906, his parents sent Alfred to the Jesuit College of St. Ignatius, where they practiced punishment with a rubber stick on his bare buttocks. Such childhood experiences could not but affect the formation of the facets of Hitchcock's psychopathology.

The director recalled: “I was intimidated by the police, Jesuit fathers, physical punishment, and many other things. This is the root of my creativity. " Film critics agree: "… if we look for life rationales and roots of the specific direction of his work, then they can only be found in Hitchcock's childhood, because his whole further life from youth to old age flowed exceptionally smoothly and happily."

Alfred grew up a fat, clumsy and uncommunicative know-it-all, with whom no one wanted to be friends in childhood. He tried to escape loneliness in his own way, for example, he memorized the train schedule on all routes of the country.

Terribly beautiful

According to Hitchcock, the ideal mystery woman is the sophisticated, blonde, Nordic type who, in his films, turns out to be a whore, a thief, or a murderer. "These elegantly dressed bitches were played by the most brilliant movie stars - Ingrid Bergman, Carol Lombard, Grace Kelly …" Their pair was not monsters or vampires, but such handsome men as Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda and Paul Newman. The beauty of the actors favorably set off the fear with which every picture of Alfred Hitchcock was saturated.

With Kim Novak on the set of the film Vertigo

the art of intimidation

The beginning of Hitchcock's film career can be considered 1920, when he got a job at the London branch of the Paramount film company. After reading "Murder on the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Poe, the future director made a very important conclusion for his subsequent creative method: it is very pleasant to feel fear while being safe. Soon he himself began to write scripts and help filmmakers. And in 1925 he shot his first film "Pleasure Garden". But fame came to Hitchcock when he began to film scripts with a criminal plot. The recognized "master of suspense" was able to skillfully create in his films an atmosphere of disturbing uncertainty, tense expectation and foreboding of something terrible. Hitchcock was sure that the worst thing is not outside, but inside each of us. He "was not afraid to look into the depths of the human subconscious (primarily his own) to understand:" the suspended state, the expectation of trouble is much more terrible than the trouble itself."

The director devoted his life to work that allowed him, “who never knew what true love is, the son of a greengrocer, to feel like a superman. No one else knew how to present evil and violence like that. He frightened people, played on the dark, irrational sides of the human soul. Evil was his working tool: using it, he solved his professional tasks."

Hitchcock's films reflect various mental disorders: kleptomania ("Marnie"), serial murders ("Frenzy"), transvestism and fetishism ("Psycho"), erotomania with the pursuit of another person ("Dizziness"), zoophobia ("Birds"). Many scenes in the films were filmed at the highest technical level for that time. When in the film "Birds" a flock with a deafening cry rushes from the sky into the chimney, and then flies out of it into the living room, none of the spectators even notices the ropes tied to their wings.

In total, the director filmed 55 full-length films, many of which have become classics of world cinema. He brilliantly recreated psychopathological human nature, devoid of the burden of moral and political feelings.

Alfred Hitchcock on cinema

• "Cinema is a life from which everything boring is cut."
• "The length of the film should be directly related to the endurance of the viewer's bladder."

The director devoted his life to a work that allowed him to "feel like a superman"

a doll in a coffin and a blue dinner

Hitchcock kept his penchant for loneliness and dislike for noisy gatherings for the rest of his life. “Living in Hollywood, I did not go to receptions, did not make close friends, did not want anything and did not get carried away with anything. Except for food and drink … Hitchcock was considered by many to be disgusting and impossible to communicate with. " Perhaps it came from envy of the degrees of inner freedom that the great director demonstrated to less talented conformists?

Alfred Hitchcock's "oddities" are, in fact, symptoms of psychopathological disorders: all kinds of phobias, obsessions and latent sadism. Many of his pranks were brutal. “Once he took his daughter Patricia to ride a Ferris wheel, and when the girl was at the very top, the father told the minister to stop the wheel, leaving his daughter to dangle in the air.”

He could give the undersized actor a child's suit, and the five-year-old daughter of the actress, who starred in the film "Birds," a little doll, very similar to her mother, who was lying in a tiny coffin.

Biographers note his pathological pedantry and accuracy. Hitchcock was obsessed with cleanliness: when he washed, he wiped the sink and faucet with three towels. Once he ordered a tailor to sew twelve suits at once, which differed from each other only in size, taking into account the fact that the client would gradually get fat. And he guessed right with the last size, reaching a weight of 167 kg. It can be assumed that the psychological background of excess weight was an unconscious motive for expanding its influence in space. In addition, a similar passion for overeating is characteristic of individuals with increased impulsivity.

Hitchcock was a treasure trove of vast and useless knowledge, and his manner of talking for hours about what others had no idea about, plunged into bewilderment. Obsessive and conservative in his habits, he always stayed in the same rooms in the same hotels.

The most "sickening" invention of Hitchcock is considered to be his famous "dinners in a blue haze", which the director sometimes arranged in his Hollywood home. “The food was dyed with various shades of blue, and guests were treated to blue steak, blue peas, azure mashed potatoes, all washed down with a blue martini. Hitchcock was terribly curious about how the guests would react to the color change. " Many began to feel sick, and not everyone accepted the repeated invitation. He rejoiced when he managed to plunge acquaintances into horror and confusion.

He was always afraid of life

Hitchcock suffered from ovophobia, in other words, he was afraid of chicken eggs. He could not see them, experiencing a special feeling of disgust from the yolk, declaring: “The blood is red, which is great. But the yolk has the worst color. I have never tasted this muck in my life."

American popularizer of science Stephen Juan believes “that Hitchcock had a mental disorder known as scopophilia (the pursuit of sexual gratification through peeping). Film historians believe that this is why he insisted that in his films the leading actresses be seduced or raped when he watched them on camera. In any case, the famous Audrey Hepburn, for this reason, refused to appear in his films. Hitchcock's frustration - voyeurism - is well portrayed in The Backyard Window.

By old age, Alfred Hitchcock was considered a living classic, which did not expand his circle of communication: he remained closed, unsociable, pathologically clean and even squeamish; his jokes, rude and often derisive, at best embarrassed those who were their targets.

In 1976, Hitchcock directed his last film, The Family Conspiracy. Realizing that his career had come to an end, he closed the office and dismissed the staff. “He was always afraid of life, and he was not afraid that it was coming to an end. Alfred knew that he would not make any more films - he simply did not have the strength for it, and he deliberately destroyed himself with alcohol. After getting drunk, Hitchcock tried to demonstrate to others the pacemaker mounted in his chest, and then fell asleep."

Despite Alfred Hitchcock's worldwide fame, the Academy Award-winning only one of his films - "Rebecca" (1940), except for the prize for his contribution to the arts in 1968. Shortly before his death, Hitchcock was elevated to the rank of nobility by the Queen of England.

Sources:

• Bezeliansky Yu. N. Beautiful Mad Men. Literary portraits. M.: JSC "Publishing House" Raduga ", 2005.
• Juan S. History of the Brain. 1640 facts. M.: RIPOL classic, 2015.
• Zhezhelenko M. L., Roginsky B. A. The World of Alfred Hitchcock. M.: New Literary Review, 2006.
• Mussky I. A. 100 great directors. M.: Veche, 2008.
• Shnakenberg R. Secret life of great filmmakers. M.: Book Club 36.6, 2012.