Hitch & Welles

My timely article on two of the greatest directors of all time!

Hitch & Welles

Alfred Hitchcock.  Orson Welles.  Two names that instantly inspire admiration, mystery and fascination in the heart of any self-respecting cineaste.  How could they ever be compared?  Welles’ titanic achievement Citizen Kane suffered a rude awakening recently at the hands of Hitchcock’s psychological masterpiece Vertigo, when the latter was voted the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound’s once a decade poll of directors and critics, ending Kane’s unprecedented fifty year reign.  What better occasion could there be to explore these two universally lauded filmmakers than that?

Hitch

Alfred Hitchcock, affectionately referred to as Hitch, is well known as ‘The Master of Suspense’ because he directed a wealth of tension filled thrillers.  He is quoted as saying “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible”, and from the agonising and eerie tension of his best films like The Birds and Rear Window, to the non-stop chases of his apparently ‘lesser’ films such as Saboteur and Torn Curtain, the man certainly knew how to put his punters through the mill.

He was raised Catholic in the then largely Protestant London, and there is a well known story of how at the age of five his father sent him to a police station with a note, which he handed to an officer, who promptly locked him in a cell for five to ten minutes saying, “This is what we do to naughty boys”.  Who knows what terrible act of mischief Hitch had committed to deserve such a harrowing punishment, but we can be almost certain that he never did it again!  From the outset he felt an outsider, afraid to do wrong and yet fascinated by those who commit evil.  This fed into his films, giving them a distinctly voyeuristic flavour as he often forced his audience into the perspective of an unseen outsider looking in, an innocent bystander bearing witness to all sorts of heinous doings.  His penchant for the macabre and a dark and sometimes perverse sense of humour stemmed from his formative years, leading Hitch to effectively psychoanalyse himself for more than five decades via his chosen form of expression.

Among his technical innovations is the now overused Hitchcock Zoom, also known as the Vertigo Effect, as it was pioneered specifically for that film, to exaggerate the perception of depth and to produce vertigo-like giddiness in the viewer.  And if you think that 3D is a recent invention then think again: Hitchcock was an early pioneer of the device, using it with striking restraint in Dial M for Murder.

His legacy is immeasurable.  From pioneering cinematic grammar and techniques to fighting for cinemas legitimacy as a worthy art form, and with countless major directors citing him as an influence there is no telling what cinema today would be like had that Bobby kept poor Hitch locked up forever.

A film about his time making Psycho is in the works, for which renowned actors the world over vied for the chance to play him.  The simply titled ‘Hitchcock’ is due out in 2013, with Anthony Hopkins landing the prize role.  Amazingly, despite all his success and influence Hitchcock never won an Oscar.  Perhaps Hopkins will win one on his behalf!

Welles

Consistently voted the greatest director of all time, both by fellow director’s and his adoring critics, in his day Orson Welles was one of the most obviously talented but famously frustrated filmmakers in Hollywood.  Terry Gilliam excepted, no director is better known for having his artistic visions thwarted at every turn (post-Kane of course), usually due to studio re-edits or lack of funding.  From his butchered masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons, to perhaps his most famous unfinished project, Don Quixote (making more comparisons to Gilliam inevitable, see Lost in La Mancha) Welles’ filmography contains far more films than are actually available to view in a finished form.  Were there such a thing as a no strings attached limitless budget, who knows what other influential masterworks the man could have unleashed on the world.

Though born into an affluent family, Welles learnt self-reliance and to work hard from an early age.  His parents separated when he was four, and at the age of ten he ran away from home with his half-sister Marjorie, only to be found a week later busking with song and dance.  Welles’ creativity and passion for performance flourished as he later staged his own plays during his early teen years at school, and he soon found work as a theatre actor, with a particular flair for Shakespeare.  By the mere age of twenty he was also working as a radio actor, during which time he met many of the collaborators with whom he would soon begin his film career.

For his debut - and best - feature film in 1941, Welles was granted for the first and only time the holy grail of every film director: total artistic control.  That film was Citizen Kane, the legendary picture that as of 2012 is supposedly inferior only to Vertigo!  It is an embellished exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, a powerful newspaper baron and sometime politician.  The twenty five year old Welles’ first feature length film was in many ways decades ahead of it’s time, making it’s mark forever on the way films are made.  Welles’ ingenious innovations spanned every department, from the way depth of field is used in cinematography to lighting techniques that allowed sets to have ceilings.

Welles may have changed cinema forever, but he was still never able to make as big a splash as he had the potential to.  Sometimes it was his own fearless impulsivity that left his work open to tinkering (the studio reworked the ending of The Magnificent Ambersons while he was AWOL in South America).  His brilliance spilled over into everything he turned his hand to, and he died the envy of everyone and anyone with an admiration for the art of moving pictures.

Alfred Hitchcock.  Orson Welles.  Rather than attempt the impossible and compare the two, we can be glad they were both blessed with the opportunity to make such good movies, and us with the chance to see them.  It’s meaningless to call the one ‘better’ than the other, and at the end of the day such polls are there to renew awareness of these must-see classics.  To borrow from Citizen Kane’s audacious tagline, ‘they’re terrific!’

(This article was originally written for FilmJuice.com and can be found here).