Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) was a British-American film director closely associated with the suspense thriller genre. He began directing in Britain before working in the United States from 1939 onwards. With more than fifty feature films to his credit, in a career spanning six decades, from silent film to talkies to the color era, Hitchcock remains one of the best known and most popular directors of all time, famous for his expert and often unrivaled control of pace and suspense throughout his movies.

Quotations

• "Like Freud, Hitchcock diagnosed the discontents that chafe and rankle beneath the decorum of civilization. Like Picasso or Dali, he registered the phenomenological threat of an abruptly modernised world." — Peter Conrad
• "I'd like to know more about his relationships with women. No, on second thought, I wouldn't." — Ingrid Bergman
• "I'm a philanthropist: I give people what they want. People love being horrified, terrified." — Alfred Hitchcock
• "I never said actors were cattle. All I said is that actors should be treated as cattle" — Alfred Hitchcock
• "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out." — Alfred Hitchcock
• "Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some." — Alfred Hitchcock
• "Here is someone, who has an enormous, inordinate, neurotic fear of disorder. And that's from which he makes his art. He always has his people in a moment of disorder. They think they're in control, they think they have power, they think they have order, and then he just slips the rug out from under them to see what they're going to do." — Drew Casper