This brief analysis will focus on issues relevant to three of Alfred HitchcockÆs films. The three films selected for analysis are: Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). The first two films were released by Paramount, while the final film was released by Universal (Spoto 456û457). The first two films were based on novels (Pierre Boileau and Thomnas NarcejacÆs DÆentre les morts, and Robert BlockÆs Psycho, respectively) while The Birds was based on the short story of the same title by Daphne du Maurier (Spoto 456û457).
All three of these stellar Hitchcock films can be characterized as positioned within the genre of suspense films. Gene Adair (6) characterized Hitchcock as the ômaster of Suspenseö and noted that in these and other films, the ôMasterö began crafting elegant thrillers as early as the 1920s, reaching his artistic peak in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Adair (9) further stated that films such as the three discussed herein share many of the key characteristics of the Hitchcock suspense film: ôàhis ways of composing images, of moving the camera, of placing one shot next to another û all designed to grip his viewers and stir their emotions.ö In addition, these three films (like many others produced over the course of HitchcockÆs long and prolific career), exhibit the directorÆs concerns for ôthe conflicts between guilt and innocence, trust and suspicion, reality and illusion, order and chaos (Adair 9).ö
Vertigo tells the story of a San Francisco detective named Ferguson who discovers his acrophobia when a police colleague falls during a rooftop chase of a suspect. The condition to the psychosomatic illness of vertigo, forcing Ferguson to resign from work and to take on a case following a woman (Madeleine) who believes herself to be possessed by a dead woman and has become suicidal.
The film reveals that Ferguson has been involved in a murder plot concoct...