Course Description

Hitchcock Films Part I - The Talented Amateur Matures

Instructor: Colin Mackey

Alfred Hithcock is known to many as the Master of Suspense, but this sells his importance as a filmmaker short. Starting his film career in the silent era and working through the 1970’s, Alfred Hitchcock was a groundbreaking innovator who helped develop the language of film and the narrative techniques that are standard today.

In this four-part series we will trace the career of Alfred Hitchcock by discussing one or two films a week. We will examine each film in the context of other films of the time, the growth of Hitchcock as a filmmaker, and the influence each film had on future directors.

In this Part 1 of the 4 part series, we will begin at the early stages of Hitchcock’s career in which he was a self-described “talented amateur” to his emergence as one of the biggest names in cinema. The weekly breakdown of films will be as follows:

Week 1 - The Silents (The Lodger, Blackmail, and Murder)
Week 2 - The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps
Week 3 - The Secret Agent and Sabotage
Week 4 - The Lady Vanishes
Week 5 - Rebecca
Week 6 - Foreign Correspondent
Week 7 - Suspicion

As we will be watching key clips in class, it is not essential to view each film in its entirety. This is especially true in the early weeks as we are covering the silent films and early “talkies” as we will be discussing two or three films a week, and that can be quite a burden of “homework”. I have also tried to front-end the multiple film weeks to give participants a bit more time to view the films.