The first film we watched was called “North by Northwest”. In the first fifteen minutes I think the film is about kidnapping a man because of a misunderstanding and I also think it is about action and thriller.
The first dominant colour, which comes on the screen, is green to show the idea that somebody is being gullible. Roger Thornhill is being gullible. The writing comes on the lines and then the lines change to a building. On that building you can see the shape of yellow taxis and the shape of the houses and therefore the city must be New York City. The title moves from top to bottom and from left to right.
A good example of tension is when the scene where the man is standing beside a road waiting for Caplan. The man is in the middle of nowhere. He can only hear the sound of the cars, buses and plane noises. He can see only cars and buses. The music is missing in this scene so we can hear him very clearly how he feels being left on his own in the middle of nowhere. Hitchcock uses close up shots on the man when he sees a car.
Another scene where camera angles and sounds are used well is when Roger Thornhill is in the middle of nowhere, where dead crops were growing. This is called the ‘crop dusting scene’ in the film. The man is waiting for someone called Victor Caplan. When he sees a plane he thinks Caplan is in it, coming to see him but it later appears that the plane is trying to kill him. The camera angles at the beginning are high and long shots.
The sounds we hear at the beginning of the scene are just car noises. We do not hear anything else afterwards for a while. Then we hear a plane noise which gets louder and louder. We hear the music when the plane crashes into with the truck to make the film exciting to the audience.
The second film we watched was called “Vertigo”, which means fear of heights. I think the film is going to be about a man who is scared of heights. The first dominant colours that initially come on the screen are black and white, which means death, and afterwards it becomes red, which means blood or danger. The title looks like fingerprints and it also looks like circles, which move around. The circles move backwards and forwards.
The third film we watched was called “Psycho”, which means something to do with the mind. The first dominant colours that come on the screen are black and white, which show evil, death and mystery. Lines come on and off the screen. It looks a little like “North by Northwest”.
The last film we watched was “The 39 Steps”. The film is about murder and mystery. Hitchcock creates tension when Hannay looks at a passenger’s eyes to see if he recognises him. The newspaper covers the face so we cannot see what the passenger is thinking. This gives tension, as we are not sure if Hannay is recognised.
The crofter hits his wife and she screams. We do not see this action but we can hear her voice. It is off-camera. There is no music. Immediately after, we move to the laughter. There is humour in the hall with Mr. Memory, a boozing man. There is a more humour in the train when the man shows the bra to the Vicar.
We know that the film is a thriller as the woman gets killed in the first ten minutes. The mood of the music hall audience is lively. The men are drinking, and then a fight breaks out. The mood is funny. The camera does not focus on Hannay’s face but on the back of his head. This creates mystery in the man.
There is no music at the tense moment, when the woman dies. We only hear the sound of the curtains flapping in the wind. We do not hear any music when this murder happens; it is silent. The sound of the train’s whistle is a woman’s scream. There are two close up shots. The first one is when we see the knife in the woman’s back and another close up shot is when we see a man’s eyes in the train but we do not know what he is thinking.
Hitchcock is a very good director; he uses music and camera shots to make his films exciting for the audience. Most of his films are action, mystery and thrillers.