Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, Essex, England.
After attending school with no special results, in 1915 Alfred Hitchcock was hired by the Henley Telegraph & Cable Company, where he had different tasks. During his teen years, he got passionate about theater, but in those years, cinema started becoming common, and in 1919, he was hired by the production company Famous Players-Lasky-Studios as a title-card designer for the silent movies produced by the company.
In 1922, Alfred Hitchcock started working in more direct ways to movie production for another company, Gainsborough Pictures, where he also met Alma Reville, who in 1926 became his wife and collaborated with him in various ways throughout his career. The first movie directed by Hitchcock was “The Pleasure Garden” (1925), but the success came with “The Lodger” /(1927), his first thriller.
In the following years, Alfred Hitchcock established himself as a director, although he didn’t always obtain box office success. In 1929, “Blackmail”, the first European sound movie, was released. For a few years, he alternated the genres of his movies, but gradually he specialized in thrillers and spy stories with movies such as “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934), which he remade in 1956, and the great success “The Lady Vanishes” (1938). At that point, his fame extended well beyond the national borders, and American producers made him lavish offers that eventually convinced him to move to Hollywood.
Alfred Hitchcock’s American experience began with the excellent results of “Rebecca” (1940) and “Suspicion” (1941), which marked the beginning of his collaboration with Cary Grant that continued in other movies. In the World War II years, the tones of his movies became anti-Nazi, continuing also in “Notorious” (1946), which marked the beginning of his collaboration with Ingrid Bergman.
Not all the movies from those years were successful but in the 1950s Alfred Hitchcock recovered with “Strangers on a Train” (1951), “Dial M for Murder” (1954), which marked the beginning of his collaboration with Grace Kelly, “Rear Window” (1954) and “To Catch a Thief” (1955).
In 1955, Alfred Hitchcock began working on the TV show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and at the same time he kept on developing his cinema projects such as “The Wrong Man” (1956), “Vertigo” (1958), and “North by Northwest” (1959).
Everyone wanted from Alfred Hitchcock more movies with certain characteristics, but he wanted to develop a different project and had to overcome various obstacles, making do with a low budget to shoot “Psycho” (1960).
Alfred Hitchcock shot other successes such as “The Birds” (1963) and “Marnie” (1964), but subsequent projects had ups and downs in their reception. Health problems forced him to reduce his activity, and his last movie was “Family Plot” (1976).
At the beginning of 1980, Alfred Hitchcock was knighted but was too ill to travel so he received the honor from the British ambassador. He died on April 29, 1980, due to heart and kidney problems.
The typical elements of Alfred Hitchcock’s work, from the creation of suspense to black humor, including his obsession with blondes and many other themes and mechanisms, have been the subject of in-depth analysis to understand the work process of a director who had a remarkable influence, also beyond the genre movies.
