![]() Adjacency to one of the most famous crimes in British history would have amused Hitchcock. Older neighbors still talked about the 1888 J ack the Ripper murders that took place in nearby Whitechapel. Other factors contributed to Hitchcock’s fascination for the macabre. It was the start of a life long love affair with America. By age 11 he was buying movie trade papers at a shop in Leicester Square – the Bioscope, and Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly, known as the Kine. A sketchpad and pencil provided an outlet for his creativity and a eventually a path to his chosen profession, in which he began self educating. Travel books opened his eyes to a wider world, as did studying six Shakespeare plays in one school year. The family owned a bible and an illustrated Grimms’ Fairy Tales. He had health problems for much of his life but despite an excessive appetite for rich food and alcohol, he lived to be 81. He felt unlucky in his physical appearance, but quite comfortable with his own company. a pudgy child, who, as an adult, would occasionally top 300 pounds. With a doting mother who was a good cook, food and its pleasures became an early preoccupation for Hitchcock. Young Hitchcock frequently accompanied his father to the crowded Billingsgate market to pick up produce for sale. The earliest surviving photograph of the future director was taken in 1906, posed with his father outside the family shop above which they lived. With hard work the family business prospered. Shopkeepers were at the precarious entry level to the British middle classes. However, Hitchcock’s movies are all the richer for understanding the demons that drove him. Collectively all commentaries past and present show how Hitchcock fed on the cultural influences and the anxieties of his childhood, then poured them into his movies.Īlfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899., the third child of a family that had been grocers and fishmongers for a generation. ![]() Both are well researched and packed with illuminating material, but tend to focus on the negative sides of his character. ![]() Many admirable biographies have been written about “the master of suspense.” Among them The Dark Side of Genius by Donald Spoto, and Alfred Hitchcock, A life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan. I offer a view of Hitchcock through the prism of censorship, against which he became a covert saboteur, quietly moving forward the needle of reform. No director challenged the British Board of Film Censors and the Production Code of America’s restrictions more often, and more successfully, than Alfred Hitchcock. Movie censorship, a mechanism of cultural control, was in direct contradiction to the instincts of film makers across the world.
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