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Cineaste (1980) - Dexterrity in an void: The Formalist Esthetics of Alfred Hitchcock

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Abstract

Expressionist directors like F.W. Murnau construct idealist images, manipulating the plastic elements of lighting, set design, camera movement, and composition; Marxist directors like Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov deconstruct images through montage, by drawing attention to the means of their production. Hitchcock is a decadent progressive, a formalist whose interest in the cinema is purely formal and non-ideological. This is not to deny the ideological nature of Hitchcock's subject matter; his anti-fascist tracts (Foreign Correspondent, Lifeboat, Rope), his cold-war spy thrillers (North by Northwest, Torn Curtain), and his aborted anti-communist projects of the Fifties (Flamingo Feather) display, on the level of content, a cynical but decidedly capitalistic bias. Hitchcock's experiments with montage, suspense, sound (Blackmail, Secret Agent), color (Vertigo, Marnie), location shooting (Shadow of a Doubt, I Confess), long takes (Rope, Under Capricorn), 3-D (Dial M for Murder), restricted spaces (Lifeboat, Rope, Rear Window), flashback narration (Stage Fright), identification (Vertigo, Psycho), and point-of-view editing (Rear Window, et al.) reveal an obsession with form for its own sake.