He is one of the masters of film making and is often noted as one of the greatest and most influential directors of all times. The unrivalled master of suspense thrillers who made an art out of murder. The important thing about his films is that more than the plot, it was the style of presenting the story that made it so exciting.
Hitchcock was also not afraid of experimenting. Needless to say, most of his experiments turned out to be successful! In the recent past, I chanced upon a few of Hitchcock films and I was surprised to find a good many of them following a very peculiar setting. Something I call, restrictive movement. He didn’t allow his characters a lot of room to move about. So, the story is set in a place and all the action takes place at the spot. This, in my opinion, is a brilliant devise to increase the tension. You know that you can’t run. You can’t escape. The viewer constantly feels claustrophobic. Ofcourse, it’s no walk in the park to make a film like that. There are numerous difficulties in shooting a film in such a small space. But, Hitchcock’s genius lies in the fact that he actually uses some of those challenges to his advantage! Let’s take some examples of his films which use restrictive movement.
Of the films that I have seen, Rear Window, Rope, Lifeboat, Dial M for Murder and The Lady Vanishes uses this style of film making. The last two, although are not strictly restrictive.
Allow me to get into some of the details of these films and see how restrictive movement film-making makes the movies so special.
Take the case of Rear Window. This is the story of a photographer who has broken his leg and is grounded for a few days. So, the bored guy takes into looking out of his apartment window into the neighbourhood. Trouble begins when he suspects one of the neighbours to have murdered his wife. The whole film is set in the small apartment of the protagonist. Everything in the film is seen from within the apartment. This has the obvious disadvantage that it restricts the viewer to the line of sight from inside the apartment. But, here Hitchcock uses this very problem to make it even more thrilling. We see the man leave the building, but we don’t see if he took a cab or not. We don’t see how far he walked in the rain that night. We don’t see him approaching the protagonist’s room, just hear the footsteps! When he enters the room, the protagonist’s wounded leg makes him vulnerable to attack and we wonder will he be able to make it! Rear Window would have been a pretty average film, if only it was made in a usual way. The story is nothing that great. It’s the tension created by the restrictive movement that makes the film special.
Rope is one of the most innovative films I have ever seen. Here, Hitchcock attempts two unusual styles. First, it’s all set in one house, so it’s restrictive. Second, it appears to have no cuts at all! That’s one hell of an experiment. The whole film is like a theatre play with no cuts at all. Well, actually it has cuts. Those days a film roll couldn’t shoot for more than 10 minutes. So, Hitchcock too shots as long as he could and then mask the cuts. For example, he would zoom the camera into a man’s coat until it blocks the screen and use the black screen to mask the cut. This is a very risky experiment, especially for a thriller. It’s an established fact that shorter scenes increase the pace of a film and long takes tend to make the film slow. So, long takes are often used in drama where the characters get time to establish the setting. For a thriller, it is important to keep the film fast, so that the audience is on the edge. Hitchcock used extreme long takes, but makes the action fast in the film, thus ensuring that the tension is maintained. The story is about two friends who kill another friend just to see if they can get away with it. To top it all, they arrange for a party in their home with the body hidden in a chest, right in the middle of the room. It’s a great story and the setting makes it all so special. This is perhaps one of the few films where restrictive movement wasn’t that challenging. The story was set entirely inside the house, so we didn’t need to know what’s going on outside. This, in fact, increases the focus of the film and we have no distractions
Lifeboat is another master-piece! This is a war era film. An allied ship is destroyed by a German U-boat and the survivors get on a lifeboat. Before being sunk, the ship managed to destroy the U-boat too and the lifeboat picks up one of the German soldiers too. The whole film is set in the lifeboat, in the middle of the ocean! The tension begins from the 1st moment, when we wonder when will they be rescued. Things are complicated by the fact that none of the ‘good guys’ really seem to know their way around the ocean. The only man who claims to know the way is the German, but can we trust him? Our sympathies keep oscillating between the characters like a foucault pendulum and we are never sure what’s happening. This film obviously had to be restrictive in its movement. The feeling of being totally lost and helpless is brilliantly used by the director. He pulls us into the lifeboat as well!
Dial M for Murder and The Lady Vanishes are not strictly restrictive. There are a few scenes which take place in other locations as well.
Dial M for Murder tells the story of a man who plans to get his wife killed by another man. The story unfolds almost entirely in the couple’s house. There are a few shots outside as well, but most of it is inside. There is a beautiful shot in this film when the cop watches the man enter the gate and fall into his trap, all through the window in the room.
The Lady Vanishes has a lot of scene shot in different locations, but even that is restrictive. The film starts at a hotel in a European country and then, after some time, takes place in a moving train. So, inspite of being shot in different locations, most of the action takes place inside the train, which makes it very restrictive indeed. The feeling of being totally trapped without an escape makes the film so thrilling! Ofcourse, Hitchcock shows that it’s not always a bad thing to be trapped in the train. There is a scene when the train proves to be the rescue vehicle!
All these films demonstrate how Hitchcock perfected the art of restrictive movement and really used it to enhance his films, not just in style, but in structure as well! Would be glad for more inputs on this! On other Hitchcock films which follow this style or films by other directors as well! Have fun!
