Suspense: "Rebecca," "Sabotage," & "Secret Agent"

This blog is going to focus on suspense that is created through different types of scenes in the three films: Rebecca, Sabotage, and Secret Agent. Scenes are very important for films. Whether the scene takes place in a hotel, a room in a house, a theater, outside on the street, on the beach, or in a mode of transportation, the scene sets the tone and mood for the film. As a creator of suspense, Hitchcock creates specific scenes to help build the tension for the audience.

There are many different scenes used in the film Rebecca that build suspense. At the beginning of the film, Maxim is standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the pool of water. A woman whose name is never mentioned in the film yells for him not to jump. This is one of the early scenes that builds suspense and evokes curiosity out of the viewer. This leaves the audience wondering who is this man, does he want to die, why does he want to die, why is staring so deeply into the water. Another important scene is the film is the opening of the house. The house has an eerie feeling and it looks almost creepy. The dark, mysterious house provides suspense to the audience.

This image is taken from the film. It is Maxim's house. As one can see, the house is dark and framed to look eerie and mysterious.

Some of the other suspenseful scenes in this film are the following: Mrs. Winter walks the dog down the steps onto the beach towards a house with a strange man into it; Mrs. Winter first goes into Maxim's dead wife Rebecca's bedroom; the scenes where Mrs. Danvers appears and disappears; the scene where Rebecca's body is found; and one of the last scenes where the mansion catches on fire. Hitchcock uses these different scenes to evoke a response out of his audience.

Sabotage is another one of Hitchcock's great movies. Likewise to Rebecca, it also has great scenes that build suspense. The opening of this film is worth talking about. The audience first encounters a the loss of electricity in London where there is a blackout and then it flashes to the scene where the audience is demanding their money back. The audience then sees a man who seems to be suspicious and nobody knows why the blackout occurred or its importance to the rest of the movie. Towards the end of the movie is where the suspense really builds up in the scenes. There are different scenes that occur with a boy carrying a bomb. During each scene on the street, he gets caught up in sideshows. Hitchcock uses the scenes of the sideshows and the camera to build suspense. The camera switches between showing of the clock and boy out on the street with the bomb. He builds the suspense by having the boy having his teeth brushed, being caught up in the middle of a band and stopped by a police officer, and when he finally gets onto a bus he pets a puppy. Eventually the bomb blows up in route of travel.

The image above is from Sabotage. The boy is viewed stopped at the sideshow while he is carrying the package which is actually the bomb.

Secret Agent was another great film of Hitchcock's that can be analyzed as to how scenery builds suspense. Showing the agent Edgar read the newspaper with his fake obituary in the newspaper in secrecy for his job is one way to build suspense. An obituary signals that someone is dead and by having a false dead man, the audience then wonders why is the man dead, what is his purpose and what direction is this film heading towards. Another suspense heightening scene is when the Edgar finds the organist dead and he falls to the floor. In his hand, he has a button. Later on in the film, there is a scene out on the mountains. Mountains signal danger, private encounters and death. Between these scenes, Hitchcock switches the camera back and forth to a puppy laying by the door, crying to get into the room and the men out on the mountain. Between the camera switching, the audience then sees the mountaineer being pushed of the mountain, falling to his death.

Hitchcock uses scenes to help set the mood and tone of his film. By using a eerie house, a citywide blackout, and a mountain, he is able to build suspense and draw in the audience. Each background scene he uses has a specific purpose. He sets his scenes accordingly to the characters, the plots and the events.

Suspense: "Blackmail," "Juno and the Paycock" & "The 39 Steps"

Writer Michael Regina tweeted "Writing suspense is all about how tight you can make the rope before you break it and send your audience plunging."

The metaphor of suspense reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from the reoccurring theme of ropes in his films, Hitchcock uses suspense as a type of rope. Each scene, each shot, each character--everything he does he does on purpose. With each scene, shot, character, etc, he is building suspense. As he builds suspense, the rope becomes tighter until the climax of the film where the rope breaks and the audience is plunging. In a sense, it almost becomes meta. The audience's anxiety, anxiousness, and tension breaks. The audience falls not only mentally but they seem to fall through the film. This climaxing moment is where the audience puts the film together and ties together all of those connections.

Hitchcock makes the rope tighter in his films The 39 Steps, Juno and the Paycock, and Blackmail. 

In my own personal opinion, I think The 39 Steps is one of Hitchcock's better suspenseful films. Suspense is a key component of this film. From the very first moment of the film, the audience experiences suspense. Nobody knows who shot the gun and after everyone floods from the building. Hannay, the main character, is an ordinary man who is put into an extraordinary situation. The entire film is filled with suspenseful moments. From the secrecy of Annabella and her mysterious murder; Hannay's voyage across the country to rightfully clear his name; the multiple police chases Hannay experiences; the Professor shoots Hannay and leaves him to die; the film climaxes with Mr. Memory telling what "the 39 Steps" are and he is shot. The entire film is built upon suspenseful moments.

The image above is an important component to the film. The dangerous, powerful, villainous character, the one Annabelle warned Hannay about lifts his hand up and says, "sure it wasn't this one?" This moment in the film really draws the audience in and heightens the suspense. When I was watching this film, I was questioning, is he the ultimate villain, what is he going to do with Hannay, and if Hannay dies, how will I find out what "the 39 steps are."

Like many of the other films, Juno and the Paycock also presents elements of suspense. Juno and the Paycock is similar to The Manxman. Suspense is developed more through the plot development and through the characters then the specific scenes, motifs, objects, landmarks, etc. In this film, there is a variety of characters that build suspense. There is the Captain who is referred to the paycock because he does not have a job and uses up all of the families finances and leaves his wife Juno to work hard and keep the family together. There is Mary, a woman who jumps between men and has an affair on her fiance Jerry and there is the son Johnny who has turned a military man killed by turning him into the police. Between the characters, suspense is created. Each character makes a selfish mistake that leads to another mistake that builds up the suspense and the plot within the film. By the end of the movie, Juno leaves with Mary and the two together try to rebuild a new life after they have lost everything.

The film cover is an important component to this film. It does a nice job demonstrating the multiple characters in this film and the different personalities that they have. Each character contributes to the suspense as there is not a lot occurring throughout the film where as The 39 Steps is a non-stop thriller. 

Blackmail is also another film that is created around suspense. At the beginning of the film, Alice murders Mr. Crewe after he attempts to rape her. Alice's boyfriend, detective Frank Webber tries to protect his girlfriend from being convicted of murder. After she is discovered by a blackmailer, the audience watches the film unfold.

There area many objects that  reoccur throughout the film that help build suspense between the audience and the film. Alice's black gloves, the knife, the jester canvas, the phone booth, etc. Another way in which Hitchcock creates suspense is by using famous landmarks/buildings. When the blackmailer is running from the cops, he runs into the British Museum. This scene specifically is very suspenseful. The camera shoots back and forth between Tracy and the police officers. As they chase him, the music in the background is shaping the mood and the tone of this scene. Finally, the suspense falls when Tracy falls to his death through the skylight on the roof of the museum.

As the blog progresses, you will notice the many ways in which suspense is used and incorporated into Hitchcock's films.

Suspense: "The Manxman" and "The Lodger"

Alfred Hitchcock's silent film The Manxman is the second silent film I have watched; the first one was The Lodger. Before the context of this class, I never took the idea of silent films or watching silent films seriously. I always dismissed these films because of the lack of language and dialogue. Due to the lack of words and dialogue, I was not engaged with the film. However, after watching these two films, my thinking has shifted. I have been quite intrigued with how silent films work and how to interpret them. Rather than trying to listen to what the characters are trying to say, I am able to visually understand what they are saying and am able to physically see how Hitchcock portrays these silent conversation into his films.

One of the many reasons why Hitchcock is so successful in both his early silent films and the films later in his career is due to his creation of suspense. Suspense is a reoccurring trend that I have seen in each one of his films. If a film is considered to be "Hitchcockian" then it must have a component of suspense.

The suspense Hitchcock creates stirs up the many emotions within his audience. Suspense causes the audience to feel anxious, excitement, tension, etc. These feelings of suspense continuously keep the audience drawn into film. Suspense is a pleasurable feeling. Therefore, suspense keeps the audience wanting more.

There are many ways in which Hitchcock incorporates suspense into his films. Some of the ways in which he does so is through the story/plot, placing an ordinary character into an extraordinary situation, the variety of characters he uses- sociopaths, psychopaths, villainous characters, the innocent character, etc., or in general, suspicious characters, the use of trains, silent scenes, the sounds used in the scenes,  and the camera shots. These are only a few of the ways in which he builds suspense.

The overarching theme of this blog is going to explore and examine the ways in which Hitchcock has used suspense in his films.

This first blog is going to start with his an analysis of his silent films.

The Manxman creates and builds suspense. One of the central ways is the plot. A man has a successful, wealthy best friend. The man who is not as successful wants to marry a woman of middle class. His father will not marry his daughter to a man who is penniless. In order to marry the love of his life, he agrees to get the daughter to wait for him while he goes to Africa to become wealthy enough to marry her. He asks his best friend to watch over her while he is gone. While the man is gone, his best friend and the woman fall in love. They want to get married. However, the man from Africa comes back successful and the woman's father wants the two to get married. The two get married, the man not knowing his love's affection for his best friend. While married, the woman is unhappy and has an affair with his best friend. She gets pregnant, has the child. Lies to her husband that the child his and then leaves him with the child. The woman tries to kill herself and is then placed on trial in a courtroom. The suspense between the main man, his best friend, Kate and Kate's father is heightened. The moment in the courtroom is climax where the story unfolds and both audiences, (watching the film and those in the courtroom) are aware of what has happened.

The image below is Kate in the courtroom waiting to be tried for her crime of suicide attempt.

Compared to many of Hitchcock's other films, The Manxman is not a very suspenseful film. It is more plot driven. Throughout the film, the audience keeps asking the question will the story unravel and the man find out that his wife is in love with another man and he is not the father of the child. That is what drives the suspense throughout the film.

The Lodger creates suspense in many different ways. At the beginning of the film, a murder happens and a stranger is seen dressed in a long trench coat, scarf, and a black top hat, similar attire to that of murderer. Suspense is built when a mysterious man appears out of the fog and stays with a family. The newspaper articles that keep reappearing with snippets of the murders throughout the film also draw in suspense. The mysterious actions of the man such as flipping over the portraits of the blonde woman over, having a photo of the first woman murdered in the crimes, and his map of the murders, similar to that of the police officers builds suspense and indicates that he could possibly be the murderer.

The photo above is the mysterious man stepping from outside of the fog into the lodge where he will be temporarily staying. The audience has no idea who this man is, which makes it even more suspenseful.

The films used in this blog are two examples of how suspense is incorporated into his films in different ways. Each film is different, therefore when suspense works for one film will not work for the other.