Alfred Hitchcock and the Art of Negative Acting

An excellent movie. Particularly the explanation the young Mrs De Winter gives as she dreams of Manderley again. For all you Hitchcock lovers out there

Silver Screenings

No scenery chewing here. Image: IMDb

Director Alfred Hitchcock was famous for “storyboarding” a movie before filming it.

He would meticulously plan camera shots and final edits, filling his shooting script with drawings. (“A traveling artist’s sketch pad,” one reporter quipped.¹)

In his book, Hitchcock & Selznick, film historian Leonard J. Leff explores Hitchock’s filmography and cinematic style.

“He invariably caught a scene’s emotional tone in his imagery,” he writes. “Part of the effect relied on scale, part on juxtaposition. … [L]ong shots followed by close-ups – or vice versa – accentuated one another and lent vitality to a film; furthermore, cutting from a full shot to a small ‘thing’ endowed an object with great power or menace.”²

An excellent example of these visual polarities is the 1940 gothic thriller, Rebecca.

The film, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, is about a young, naïve girl…

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