Thriller Directors

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is perhaps Britain's most famous and highly regarded film director, yet he is best known today - even in Britain - for the films he made after he left the country in 1939 for a career in Hollywood. Films like Notorious (1946), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) attest to a skilful filmmaker who thoroughly deserved his reputation as the 'Master of Suspense'

"The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema" - Alfred Hitchcock

It is important to remember that Hitchcock began his career in the era of silent movies. His first nine films as director - between 1925 and 1929 - were all silent, and even his first sound film, Blackmail (1929), was begun as a silent, and was released in silent and sound versions.

The limitations of the silent form led filmmakers to develop a visual language to enable them to say with images what they could not using dialogue or sound. By the time of the arrival of sound in 1927 (later in Europe) this filmmaking language had become so sophisticated that sound was felt by some to be almost unnecessary. Others - including Hitchcock - felt that the arrival of sound meant that something was lost to cinema. Directors were no longer forced to tell a story using images alone, and cinema's distinctively visual storytelling suffered as a result.

Throughout his career, Hitchcock continued to believe in cinema as a visual medium. For him, dialogue and sound should remain secondary to the image in telling the story. This is not to say that he was completely uninterested in dialogue - he worked with many fine writers, and many of his films have excellent dialogue sequences. But it's true that when we think of Hitchcock we tend to remember images - the shower scene inPsycho (1960) or the handcuffed Robert Donat and Madelaine Carroll inThe 39 Steps (1935) - rather than lines of dialogue.

Hitchcock has clearly influenced near on every thriller director to appear after his most iconic work. Directors such as Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese have both looked up to Alfred's work and have formed their own style from some of the elements that originated from Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the first names who comes to mind when talking about auteur theory. His most famous films are Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and Rear Window. Hitchcock’s story telling techniques were renowned for their intelligent plots, witty dialogue, and the smattering of mystery and murder. He has been attributed with revolutionizing the thriller genre. The reason for his success, however, was not the genre that he was working in, but rather the skill which he exhibited in the film-making. ie his treatment of the subject in terms of the shots he uses and how he combines them are more important than the genre. One of Hitchcock’s best-known screen moments is the terrifying shower scene in Psycho. This shot features 70 distinct shots in less than 1 minute. They are fused together in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between the Montage and the Mise-en-Scene.
M. Night Shamyalan

In this clip here, possibly the most iconic of any in the history of films, Janet Leigh's character is in the shower and is killed supposedly by Norman Bates' mother. This uses a different type of background music to Shyamalan's clip below, as Psycho's music enhances the intensity of the murder, as it seems to fit the heartbeat of Leigh. The similarity between them both however is the amount of different camera angles shown in each. Psycho does however use them a lot more quickly as it shows over 70 different camera angles within the short shower sequence.

M. Night Shyamalan (born Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan) is one of the few blockbuster directors who lean in the direction of horror/suspense. Although his films often feature supernatural and otherworldly phenomena, they generally are not considered horror movies -- in part because they're relatively family-friendly affairs, focusing on plot and interpersonal relationships rather than explicit content. This clean, "classy" style of fright film-making has drawn comparisons to legendary director Alfred Hitchcock.
After his financially disastrous feature film debut, the comedy-drama Wide Awake, Shyamalan made his first foray into horror/suspense with 1999's The Sixth Sense. The modestly budgeted film about a child psychologist treating a boy who claims to see ghosts exceeded all expectations, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of the year (after The Phantom Menace) and garnering six Academy Award nominations, including Best Director.

The Sixth Sense established Shyamalan not only as a master of suspense, but also as a blockbuster filmmaker. It established his style of dramatic, personalized thrills, shaped by both his direction and his writing. Perhaps most notably, though, it established his slight-of-hand storytelling, which culminated in one of the most infamous "twist endings" in cinematic history. The twists would continue through Shyamalan's next few movies, becoming a trademark that would characterize his early career.

Studies that use focus groups have shown that Shyamalan is not recognised as a director, but he is for his films. This therefore does not give him auteur staus' as people are only really able to identify his pieces of work, not him in his own right as Hitchcock would be known.


In this clip from Shyamalan's 'The Village' we can clearly see a distinct style of thriller that differs greatly from Hitchcock's Psycho. In this clip, non-digetic background music is used as an additive, that promotes feeling within the scene, not just suspense. The suspense in this clip is aminly created simply by the images, and the reactions by the actors.