A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.
A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.
Actors are cattle.
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.
Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.
Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
I am scared easily, here is a list of my adrenaline - production: 1: small children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one.
I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.
I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.
I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
I'm full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.
I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.
If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.
In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.
In reference to the murder scene in 'Dial M for murder': As you have seen on the screen; the best way to do it is with a scissor.
Revenge is sweet and not fattening.
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.
Self-plagiarism is style.
Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.
Someone once told me that every minute a murder occurs, so I don't want to waste your time, I know you want to go back to work.
Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.
Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.
Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.
The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.
The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.
The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.
There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.
There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
There's nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.
This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.
What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'
You reach a point where you say you're not going to do juveniles any longer.
Of the two hundred and seventy episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitchcock directed seventeen of them.
Hitchcock has been pastiched several times in The Simpsons. For instance, the 1992 Halloween episode 'Treehouse Of Horror III' uses the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock Presents but substitutes Homer for Hitchcock. In the 1992 episode 'A Streetcar Named Marge' there is a recreation of Hitchcock's cameo from The Birds.
One particular episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (1963) (which starred Brandon de Wilde and Diana Dors) was not initially broadcast by NBC because the FCC felt that the ending was too gruesome. The plot has a magician's assistant performing a "sawing a woman in half" trick, not knowing it's a gimmick, and he cuts the unconscious woman in half. In syndicated repeats of the series, however, it has since been shown.
It is rumoured that Raymond Burr was cast as the murderer Lars Thorwald in Rear Window because he resembled Hitchcock's former producer, David O. Selznick, with whom Hitchcock had a somewhat strained working relationship.
He had a serious fear of the police, which reportedly was the reason he never learned to drive. His reasoning was that if one never drove, then one would never have an opportunity to be pulled over by the police and issued a ticket.
He often described his childhood as being very lonely and sheltered, which was undoubtedly compounded by his weight issues.
He loved the number 7. He often placed numbers that added up to 7 in his movies.
He often said that his personal favourite of his own films was Shadow of a Doubt.
He inspired the adjective "Hitchcockian" for suspense thrillers.
He hated to shoot on location. He preferred to shoot at the studio where he could have full control of lighting and other factors. This is why even his later films contain special effects composite and rear screen shots.
He was ranked #2 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Greatest directors ever!" in 2005.
He praised Luis Bu?uel as the best director ever.
He almost never socialized when not shooting films, with most of his evenings spent quietly at home with his wife Alma Reville.
Steven Spielberg has named him as an influence.
He had a hard time devising one of his signature walk-ons for Lifeboat, a film about a small group of people trying to survive on a small boat. What he eventually came up with was to have his picture in a newspaper advertisement for weight loss that floated among some debris around the boat. He had happened to have lost a considerable amount of weight from dieting around that time, so he was seen in both the "Before" and the "After" pictures.
When he won his Lifetime Achievement award in 1979, he joked with friends that he must be about to die soon. He died a year later.
He was listed as the editor of a series of anthologies containing mysteries and thillers. However, he had little to do with them. Even the introductions, credited to him, were, like the introductions on his television series, written by others.
He was director William Girdler's idol. Girdler made Day of the Animals borrowing elements from Hitchcock's The Birds.
His bridling under the heavy hand of producer David O. Selznick was exemplified by the final scene of Rebecca. Selznick wanted his director to show smoke coming out of the burning house's chimney forming the letter 'R." Hitch thought the touch lacked any subtlety; instead, he showed flames licking at a pillow embroidered with the letter 'R.'
From 1977 until his death, he worked with a succession of writers on a film to be known as The Short Night. The majority of the writing was done by David Freeman, who published the final screenplay after Hitchcock's death.
He made a cameo appearance in all of his movies beginning with The Lodger except for Lifeboat, in which he appeared in a newspaper advertisement.
He never won a best director Oscar in competition, although he was awarded the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award at the 1967 Oscars.
Once dressed up in drag for a party he threw. Footage of this was in his office, but his office was cleaned out after his death, and it is not known if the footage still exists.
He was one of the first 100 persons to have his name set into the pavement in London's 'Avenue of the Stars' in Convent Garden.
He was born only one day before his wife.
It was reported that he couldn't stand to even look at his wife, Alma Reville, while she was pregnant.
He often used the "wrong man" or "mistaken identity" theme in his films.
In the year 1967, The late great Alfred Hitchcock was awarded 'The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.' This made him the 20th recipient of this prestigious award.
Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first 100 to be honoured with his name set into the pavement in London's 'Avenue of the Stars' in Convent Garden.
Der M?de Tod was his declared favourite movie.
According to Alfred himself, he was required to stand at the foot of his mother's bed, and tell her what happened to him each day. This explains Anthony Perkins in Psycho standing at the foot of his mother's bed.
You can share a link to this page with your friend!