The Guardian (19/Apr/2012) - In praise of... Alfred Hitchcock

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• article: In praise of... Alfred Hitchcock
• author(s):
• newspaper: The Guardian (19/Apr/2012)
• keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, British Film Institute, North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), The Pleasure Garden (1925)

Article

In praise of... Alfred Hitchcock

Further proof of how badly the Academy Awards can get it wrong surely lies in this fact: Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar for best director. Yet he has won an even higher public accolade: he's become synonymous with a style. Ask even the most casual of film-goers to define "Hitchcockian", and you'll hear about the stabbing strings in Psycho; the escalation of panic in The Birds; the icy blondes and the MacGuffins. Hitchcock was that rare thing: a hugely successful director who learned from the avant garde - and so helped set the standards for all subsequent cinema. Born in the last days of Queen Victoria, Hitchcock gained his technical mastery and economy making silent movies - so full marks to the British Film Institute for restoring nine of those early works. The line between his 1926 debut, The Pleasure Garden, and a masterpiece such as North by Northwest is surely a long one, but it will be a treat for film fans to trace it.