HitchGeek Academy: How to Watch Hitchcock
Nobody pleased a crowd better than Alfred Hitchcock, and if entertainment is all you want, his movies are a great go-to. Yet, as my sagging bookshelf can testify, there’s more going here on than sultry blondes and sexy villains. In "How to Watch Hitchcock," we explore how Hitchcock’s youth in London in the nineteen-teens practically predestined him to become the Master of Suspense. Did you know these facts?
• Hitchcock’s nearby neighborhood of Limehouse was the home of Britain’s film industry.
• His other nearby neighborhood, Whitechapel was Jack the Ripper’s territory.
• Hitchcock lived through the German firebombing of London.
Let’s go on an animated tour of early London enhanced with rare footage from his youth to see how these factors shaped his notions of terror and suspense—not to mention filmmaking itself. Watch the docuseries that's been praised by newbies and scholars alike!
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Episode 1: Beyond the Shadow
By 1955, the year he came out with his TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitch was so famous that you could literally identify him by his shadow. But if that's all you think of when you think of the man, you'd be missing the real flesh and blood. This episode takes you back to the beginning of ...
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Episode 2: The Punk Years
As a young man, Alfred Hitchcock hung out with anarchists, modernists, Dadaists and radicals who questioned the very air we breathe. Those values helped his artistic sensibility for decades to come. Learn how.
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Episode 3: Murder!
The Lodger (1927) may have been Hitchcock's breakout film but Murder! (1930) revealed the depth of his humanism. In this film the young artist foregrounded his uneasiness with easy answers of accepted morality—and pointed the way to more nuanced view of human nature.
