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 The Birds, 1963
In a conversation with writer James Allardice in 1963, Hitchcock compared his own output to that of painter Paul Klee, whose works were also marked by a distinctive style. They may be all corpse-thriller and suspense pictures, Hitchcock remarked, but there is a vast difference betweenwell say, Rebecca and Psycho and The Trouble with Harry and North by Northwest or The Birds. Look at the difference in all these pictures. Not one of them resembles another in any form except suspense.
While Hitchcock had seemingly accepted the tag of thriller director, he didnt accept that this in any way limited his ability to deal with real issues and concerns, things many American film critics felt were missing from his so-called escapist entertainments.
Hitchcocks desire to appeal to both the sophisticated filmgoer and the general public that had made him a star shaped the making and marketing of his next film The Birds (1963). He had attempted to reshape his reputation with critics before, with such films as The Wrong Man (1956) and Vertigo (1958); however, whatever positive press they received at the time of release was at the expense of the support of the general movie-going public.
With a number of his recent feature films (e.g., The Wrong Man, 1956; Vertigo, 1958; Psycho, 1960; and The Birds, 1963), Hitchcock had become increasingly preoccupied with undermining audience expectations of what constituted a Hitchcock film. Whether shooting in a spare, documentary style (The Wrong Man), killing the lead character off in the middle of the film (Psycho), or ending a film without a clear-cut resolution (Vertigo; The Birds), Hitchcock had been making daring, revolutionary choices for nearly a decade and within the Hollywood studio system.
Some of the earliest reviewers to notice Hitchcock's artistry were several brilliant critics (including François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, who would later make names for themselves as filmmakers) writing for the increasingly influential French publication Cahiers du Cinma. These critics launched a campaign in the mid-to-late 1950s to advance the view of Hitchcock as a cinematic genius. They believed him to be a master of cinematic form who articulated a distinctive moral vision of the human condition, which deepened during his years in America.
Unlike most of the leading American critics of the time (there were a few notable exceptions), the French critics believed Hitchcock's Hollywood films surpassed those he made in England, and saw his career as a perfect vehicle for illustrating their conviction that great cinematic art could flourish within the Hollywood studio system. Only when this theory of cinema became the dominant aesthetic discourse among journalistic and academic film critics in the United States in the late 60s and early 70s (helped along by critics such as Andrew Sarris, Peter Bogdanovich, and Vincent Canby), did Hitchcock's reputation as an artist improve in his adopted country.
The growth of Hitchcock's artistic reputation was supported by other developments at the time. In the spring of 1968, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with the Irving G. Thalberg Award for a consistent high level of achievement by an individual producer. Hitchcock had been nominated four times for a directorial Oscar®, but, as he frequently put it, he had always been the bridesmaid.
The Directors Guild of America also honored Hitchcock that spring with the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for his directorial achievements. Hitchcocks reputation received another boost when the English edition of Truffaut's influential book on Hitchcock was finally published in late 1967.
The text in the Chronology section has been adapted from "Alfred Hitchcock" by Robert E.
Kapsis, from American National Biography, edited by John Garraty. © 1999
by the American Council of Learned Societies. Used by permission of Oxford University
Press, Inc.
Adapted by Robert E. Kapsis, Kathie Coblentz, and Amy Stoller.
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