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August 13th marks the birth day of legendary British director Alfred Hitchcock. He was one of the world's most influential film directors (as well as a television director). He died in April 1980, bring to an end a stellar career. He is considered a pioneer in many of the techniques that are still utilized in the suspense and thriller film genres. Indeed, he is considered the master of these film genres even today, a generation after his death. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films or movies during his career that ran over six decades. He began work in the silent film era and continued into the colorized film age. He remains one of the most consistently successful and widely regarded of all film directors ever. Throughout his career, many of Hitchcock's films drew heavily on fantasy, fear and were extremely well known for their dry or droll humor. He often took to portraying innocent people that were truly stuck in circumstances completely beyond and out of their realm of control. His work often involved taking the guilt associated with the innocent character's perceived shortcomings and transferring it to another character and magnifying it significantly. One of the other common themes that appear in Hitchcock films is what some have called the basic or essential incompatibility between men and women in many circumstances and situations. He oftentimes took a rather cynical view of romance in his filmed work. "Rebecca" was the only film by Hitchcock to receive an Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. Hitchcock himself never received a Best Director nod from the Academy. He did receive the Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 1967, however. Many considered Hitchcock to be far more popular with his audiences during his career than he was with American film and movie critics. The French film critics in the 1950s actually were the first critiques to truly view Hitchcock's films are true masterpieces. Even years after his death, Hitchcock is viewed as a director who perfectly combined art and entertainment in his films -- in a manner that few others have come close to matching. He has inspired many, many other directors, producers, filmmakers and actors through his work. |
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