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Hitchcock on the Dick Caveat show (1972) 

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Hitchcock on the Dick Caveat show (1972) 

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"Mac Guffins: in spy films they are the thing the spies are after the thing that the characters on the screen worry about but the audience don't care"

"involve the audience from close-ups"

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Interview with the Master of suspense & psychological thriller genres 1973 "tomorrow show on nbc"

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Interview with the Master of suspense & psychological thriller genres 1973 "tomorrow show on nbc"

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"suspense comes out in giving the audience information (he does not make mystery films) if the audience don know how can they emote (no whodunnits since to find out everything you have to turn to the last page which is an intellectual exercise for audience like a puzzle no emotion just calculation) "In suspense you tell the audience that there is a bomb under the chair that will go off in 5 minutes and make them wait"

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Hitchcock declares that the public whose film is partially aimed at, should be informed of a certain narrative element so that the suspense is prolonged in time.

suspense is able to shape the "overall outlook on the films" "ability to determine how we feel by controlling what we know"

The rapid editing between these sequences' shot conveys suspense within the montage (regarding "Murder! when Sir john discovery that the murder is not Diana Baring but Handell Fame)

suspense address and position its audience in such a consistently unilateral way
suspense privileged over and separated from surprise , narrative apposite

Hitchcock definition of suspense as a method for maximising audience involvement with characters (emotional involvement with heroes helps caught up by suspense

There could be different forms of identification and involvement with suspense:
suspense conducive to the production of identification and identification is the end goal of all suspense

Suspense in Hitchcock films involves not one but three main forms of address depending of how we are being invited to relate to the narrative worlds

Vicarious suspense
(Hitchcock definition) audience experience anxieties and uncertainties on behalf of a character (in a way that is experienced in the imagination through the actions of another person) Knowing a crucial narrative information of which that character is unaware. (same emotion with a character and distant at the same time since we know of an element that the interested character is not). (Bomb scene in "Sabotage")
We can't have full involvement with characters since we can't communicate with them about the threat. "vicarious suspense situations tend to reduce the characters figuratively to the status of childlike vulnerability and naivety"

Shared suspense
"it enables the viewer to fear along with rather than simply for a character" "closer insight into a character's mental and emotional state" it leads to a fuller form of identification.
Victor Perkins observes that sight and ear are the sense that create a fuller and more intense identification since us and the character are on the same level. "Rear window" scene of Lisa being caught and Jeffries can't do nothing.
Divided identification: transfer of identification from one character to another. (audition scene "Murder!")
Association is a more applicable term (Perkins) since we can't completely project ourselves into a character on the screen.

Hitchcock films mix and fluctuate between the two forms of suspense in various ways.

Direct suspense
is felt by the viewer independently from the character's experience, so is not depending on identification for its overall effect.
(Victor Perkins) "we can become involved in the action of a picture in a way which precludes a specific loyalty, a direct emotional commitment to a particular character"
It can mediated through a character emerging from a vicarious suspense (Rusk's murder of Babs in "Frenzy"): direct suspense can be created by omitting the access to some key narrative events or piece of information.
"characters unwitting agents throughout which the film is able to establish direct way of relating to its audience".
Shared suspense tends to offer a much closer sense of involvement and empathy with a character, can function as a way of making us feel directly exposed to the dangers inherent within a film's narrative world. (Lila's approach to the Bates house in "Psycho" vicarious, shares and direct suspense). In Psycho the viewer, as the only constant throughout the film, is required to shoulder the cumulative burdens of the suspense more fully and directly than in any of the Hitchcock films.
Direct suspense becomes a means of placing the viewer in a much more direct, unmediated relationship to the film world. Identification tends to serve more as a safety screen of filter for shielding us from the worst effects of the suspense, only for it to be withdrawn.

Patterns of suspense
"suspense to be considered as a particular way of controlling our path through the narrative flow of events"
this control is ambivalent
1 pointing forward narrative's future tense (what and when certain events will happen)
2 stalling narrative process by delaying and withholding the information required to reach that destination.

Hitchcock corse cumulative e process often characterised by a steady build-up of tension
Hitchcock films are structured according to main phases of suspense each of which contains its own definable local suspense dramas.
"shifting local suspense scenarios engage and challenge the viewer much more extensively, rigorously and actively that would be the case if the film relied solely upon the global situation" (in "notorious" though effectiveness of the suspense lies in the fact that it is both self-contained and deeply bound up with the whole process.

"character's suspense path may run at different speeds and intensities compared to that experienced by other characters and by the viewer"

"A character's suspense may, therefore, be incompatible with or form only a part of that experienced by the viewer who is often required to juggle conflicting emotions in relation to more that one character. ("notorious" staircase descent at the end of the film fear for Alicia safety and Alex safety run in parallels against each other - dual/split suspense)

"dual suspense can therefore be seen as a form of meta-suspense consisting of a tension or wavering between two separate strands".

"the overall experience of suspense in Hitchcock cinema thus involves a complex range of constantly shifting emotional and intellectual responses that cannot be defined adequately be such general terms as "dread or "fear" for in reality we may be experiencing a range of these simultaneously, on different levels and in relation to very different characters".

"the demanding nature of such cumulative, multi-levelled suspense is demonstrated in "Rear Window" final twenty minutes, culminating in the resolution of the murder mystery, around a series of individual, but interconnected suspense scenarios:
-Lisa's successful delivery of the note to Thornwald's
apartment (after a close escape).
-Jeffries' telephoning Thornwald so as to send him off on a wild goose chase.
-Lisa's and Stella's digging-up of the flower bed.
-Lisa's entry into Thornwald's apartment and her subsequent confrontation with the murderer.
-Thorwald's attack on Jeffries.
"as in Notorious, the cumulative nature of the suspense here partly arises from the way that certain actions are repeated in subsequent phases but with a heightened element of urgency and risk about them." (Lisa crosses over to Thornwald's apartment twice first smelly, second exposing her to attack)

(talking about the character of "Miss Lonely Hearts" situation of suspense and the main drama in parallel in "Rear Window") "by bringing these suspense situations to a height at the same time, the film pulls both characters and viewer in two different directions, forcing them to wrestle with and revise the priorities established earlier in the film regarding the various apartments" and "complicating the notion of suspense a s method obtaining audience involvement by constructing a rather bifurcately centrifugal trajectory into, and viewport upon, the narrative worlds."

"Suspense's ability to distract and pull the viewer away from a film's main dramatic centre"

"whereas critical discussions of suspense tend to stress its tendency to privilege the viewer through the disclosure of narrative information unavailable to the characters, the above examples suggest that its withholding of information can be equally effective in constructing a more enlightened viewpoint upon a film by encouraging influences to be made which, although ostensibly incorrect, point towards the real centre of a text's interest and significance. In case of shared suspense, a character may also participate to a degree in such insights.

Suppression and surprise

"Murder!... it highlights a preoccupation with concealing information from the audience , rather than privileging them with it"

Douglas Pye Observes: Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) for instance depend on suppressive narrative and on the moments of revelation produced by sustained withholding of information from the spectator. Each of the films departs radically from Hitchcock expresses preference for the method of suspense, in which the spectator is placed in a position of knowledge in favour of surprise, in which something previously withheld is suddenly revealed"

"narrative suppression is accompanied by a use of generic cues which have the effect of misleading the spectator"

"North by Northwest offer further variations on this use of suppressive narrative in order to mislead the viewer"

Suspense and surprise

Douglas Bye
"surprise suppresses narrative information and places the spectator on an equal footing with the characters, but, in addition to limiting access to information, it depends, in effects, on misleading the audience in order to spring the surprise . Suspense, on the other hand, privileges the audience, offering more information that the characters have and explaining the real nature of the situation...in the case of mystery , the audience, like and investigator , knows that there is a puzzle to be solved, but the information that could lead to its solution is withheld."

"the Hitchcock films which pose the greatest disruption and threat to the security of the viewer's position are those which tend to use suspense and surprise in an interrelated rather than mutually exclusive way."

"so while Hitchcock defines suspense according to its privileging aspect, suppressive narrative has the effect of making its withholding component more dominant, thereby maximising the partial, imperfect nature (and minimising the accuracy and reliability) of the information upon which suspense feeds. Moreover, whereas standard definitions of suspense tend to regard its withholding function in terms of the "how" rather than the "what" the effect of suppressive narrative upon suspense is to hold back or tamper with some of the "what" as well but, crucially, without making us aware that is in fact the case (therefore also foiling, in the process, any attempt to accurately predict a film's likely outcome).

"suppressive narrative and surprise can, then seriously compromise the privileging aspect of suspense -either by restricting the amount of narrative information released to a greater extent than is typically the case or by corrupting and distorting the nature of the information given (so as to make it seem more than it actually is). When both strategies are combined, the two assumptions embodied in Hitchcock definition of suspense (1 public must be informed 2 information given will be reliable) are challenged.

rereading the text

"in Hitchcock works... subsequent viewings offers possibilities fore even further interactions and fluidity between these two strategies. (surprise and suspense).In the case of films employing suppressive narrative , the surprise disclosures tend to become transformed into or part pf the suspense second time around"

“the original suspense available on a first viewing is similarly tranformed froma more quantifiable , indefinable kind into a much more sharply focused form of anxiety based upon fuller knowledge of the exact nature of the threats involved”

“…we are never allowed to feel completely aloof from the characters’ own more fallible ways of apprehending their narrative worlds”

“…that the character never get (and a luxury rarely available to us in the world outside of the film): the chance to reconfront, reassess and rework the original experience with the benefit of hindsight.”

“in the case of Hitchcock’s cinema, this will tend to involve having to reassess our sense of the tonal make-up and balance of a fil, as certain elements are liable to become more prominent on a second or subsequent viewing”

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Neurocinematic study of the suspense effects in Hitchcock’s psycho

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Neurocinematic study of the suspense effects in Hitchcock’s psycho

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Neurocinematics focuses on movie research from an empirical perspective, adopting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other cognitive neuroscience technologies as well as theoretical methods.

experiment to detect audiences brain activity when watching movies and verify the manipulative power of narrative film.
Observed brain activity watching the sequences of Psycho, the experiment verified the specific effect of Hitchcock set-up of suspense and explored the near cognitive brain mechanisms behind the suspense effect.

"suspense is one of the factors linked to increased transportation"

"when watching suspense movies, audiences hold strong emotion like fear, hate, or anxiety and need to activate complex cognitive mechanisms such as prediction, anticipation, or moral judgement"

this paper draws on Hasson's team's method to study the brain activity consistency of subjects while watching Hitchcock Psycho from the perspective of cinematic, and it preliminary discusses the movie's suspense effect. The movie and its suspense effect will be analysed from a cognitive perspective fMRI experiment and questionnaire survey will be combined.

Stimuli: shower murder scene in Psycho and control video of a natural street scene outside the art school building of Beijing Normal University with mo plot or narratio. Both in  black and white.

Participants: college students 21-25 years old 5 females 5 males no art or movie majors. none of them had seen Psycho before.

During the process the subjects brain activities were scanned and recorded.

They underwent under a behavioural test procedure to take an image recognition and behavioural test related to the video clips.

results:
The activity in the brain's areas caused by the movie clips was more intense than those caused by the natural scene. Compared with the usual daily scene, a delicately constructed movie clip has generated a more consistent cognitive process pattern.
During the street scene watching those areas were little or not activated. This results suggests that fictional narration and construction of suspense lead audiences to a higher cognitive level and make them engaged in more positive perception. Audiences are more active in the aspect of visual, auditory processing, as well as attention and object recognition in movie watching than natural vision.

The brain activity of the subjects has obvious ups and downs correspond to different stages of plot development in the film's content, in line with Hitchcock expectations of the effect of the movie. Audiences reactions can be manipulated by the constructed narrative and audio-visual design of the movie.

High-speed, dense, and coherent editing keeps the visual brain areas highly excited as they receive rich visual stimulation from the film. from the perspective of the lens view, the visual brain regions are more and more active with close-up shots that in a wide scene. Larger scenes contain much information that distracts audiences' attention.

The camera is the privileged perspective of the audience, then  the moving camera will lead the audience to move with it, mobilise their attention, and approach or exit a scene or detail.

Through the editing, lens views, and camera movement, the film successfully mobilizes and affects the audiences' attention and psychological state.

The audiences were also led and influences by the design of the sound in the movie. (silence and sudden music)

Behaviour test reporting Data

the subjects remembered key plot points better that general plot points.

Hitchcock in an interview: "this is my speciality, I will divide it into two categories- fear and suspense. Surprise leads to fear, suspense comes from anticipation".

The results showed that during the process of watching the film, the average brain activity of the subjects was influenced by the content of the film, activity in the visual and auditory brain regions was also influenced by the characteristics of the visual and the soundtrack designs. The audience showed active brain cognitive activities and positive memory and emotional engagement to close-ups, quick editing, critical visual information, and dissonant music. The shower murder of Psycho is a classic that can hardly be surpassed or imitated in the history of cinema, but its success is accomplished in the most basic way: to get close and activate the audience's cognition process.

This study is a preliminary attempt to combine film study with cognitive neuroscience.

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Hitchcock a definitive study by Truffaut

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Hitchcock a definitive study by Truffaut

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"Suspense is the most intense presentation possible of dramatic situations"

"The suspense sequences of a film are its privileged moments those highlights that linger on in the viewer's memory"

"the art of creating suspense is also the art of involving the audience, so that the viewer is actually a participant in the film"

"film-making is a three-way game where the audience, the director and his picture are required to play"

"the most powerful means of holding onto the viewers' attention. It can be either the suspense of the situation or the suspense that makes the public ask itself "what will happen next?"

"there is no relation between fear and suspense"

"in the usual form of suspense it is indispensable that the public be made perfectly aware of all the facts involved. Otherwise there is no suspense."

"mystery is seldom suspenseful"

"fear for someone safety... and fear depends upon the intensity of the public's identification with the person who is in danger."

"whenever possible the public must be informed."

"Knowing what to expect, they wait for it to happen. (essential to the build-up of suspense)."

"a suspense situation is weakened because the action is not sufficiently clear."

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Chapter from Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson “Hitchcock and Narrative Suspense”

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Chapter from Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson “Hitchcock and Narrative Suspense”

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"How is the generation of a state of anxious uncertainty about what happens next (suspense) generated?"
Noel Carrol argues that is created in a narrative where the question "what happens next" is dramatised through the representation of two alternate narrative outcomes: - moral outcome which is desirable but unlikely - immoral outcome which is undesirable and likely to happen.

The moral structure of suspense
In Hitchcock's work, usually, the suspense is generated around the plot involving the conflict between the hero or heroine and the villain/s is linked to the suspense generated by the romance plot
(the emotional emphasis of the romantic emphasis is different).
Hitchcock combines the elements of the thriller and the romance in his narrative, augments the parameters of suspense intensifying our emotional investment the narrative outcome.

Characters perceived as source of threat are rendered alluring  because endowed with the sympathetic traits of the dandy such as wit and charm.
Moral inversion of that renders villainy alluring in Hitchcock is further sustained through systematic strategies of visual and narrative parallelism and doubling between hero and villain that undercuts the ostensible moral opposition between them. (Notorious Sebastian and Devlin)

In his conversation with Hitchcock, Truffaut claims that "the very nature of suspense requires a constant play with the flux of time, either by compressing it, or more often by distending it. - suspense as temporal retardation comparing the event that is presented to the spectator the moment that a state of anxious uncertainty is generated with another event which is the delayed one.

Subjective (camera letting the audience experience through the eyes and mind of the characters) and Objective aspect of suspense differs not simply through the presence of a character's' point of view but also by presenting the spectator only one side of the suspense situation.

Hitchcock: "mystery is seldom suspenseful" in response to Truffaut raising the idea that suspense may raises the idea that suspense may rise out of a hidden danger.

Mystery is not suspenseful but it becomes suspenseful when uncertainty breeds anxiety that fuels the wish to resolve it.

The use of suppressive narration that restricts us to the point of view of a character in a state of anxious uncertainty and that sustains suspense by restricting us to that point of view is ubiquitous in Hitchcock films.

Suspenseful mystery (impure suspense, subjective suspense) - anxiety= enigma to resolve; good or bad outcome equally possible; narrative delay= prolonging the narrative suppression; our state of anxiety uncertainty constant until narrative possibilities is resolved.

Pure suspense (objective suspense) - spectator placed in a situation where their anxious uncertainty is itself subject to manipulation and control; suspense situation becomes on in which suspense can be increased or decreased according to the calculus of probability; delay drops out of significance (play its role as a suspense generator only when the nature of the narrative answer is an anxiety-provoking)

Common traits - they both have anxious uncertainty generated by the possibility of a good or bad outcome to a narrative.
Difference traits- in impure suspense the good or bad outcome is not the distinctive suspense - generating mechanism (is the withholding of the narrative information that does not bring clarity to the narrative situation sustaining the possibility of a threat and our interest to find out the nature of the threat.

Hitchcock 2 aesthetics of narrative suspense:
1st Pure suspense situation - spectator misplaced in a position of knowledge superior to that of the character and the elements of the scene are orchestrated according to a calculus of probability that intensifies the likelihood of an undesirable action, relative to the likelihood of a desirable action taking place.
2nd Impure suspense - narrative is suppressive about the narrative outcome; we are aligned to the psychology of a character rather than being placed in a superior position to them; help aligns us with the character feelings.

There have been identified 5 aspects that deviate from Hitchcock pure or objective suspense

1 - inversion of moral co-ordinates : he encourages the audience to take delight in the thought of something that is morally undesirable.
2- the inversion of moral co-ordinates may be supported by the use of black humour that fosters on identification with the narrative situation of the dandy or anti-hero.
3- Hitchcock suspense is informed by mystery created by a suppressive or restricted narration that renders the character and the spectator intrigued by what is morally undesirable.
4 - narrative suppression in Hitchcock generates the promise of surprise or shock.
5 - fascination with the wicked and shocking is used in Hitchcock through the way in which his narrative secret is hedged about with taboos that inscribe conventional morality a set of prohibition that is desirable to breach. (the spectator engagement with suspenseful situation as a form of eaves dropping or voyeurism.

the defining characteristic of Hitchcock suspense is its "impurity" defined in part by the inversion of the moral co-ordinates (same as pure suspense)  and by the suppression of key information pertaining to the nature of narrative situation.
the spectator position is the threshold of something forbidden entrust themselves to Hitchcock the narrator, to get the access (content must be elusive for the suspense to be maintained).

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Article toward a theory of audience response to suspenseful films

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Article toward a theory of audience response to suspenseful films

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Still feeling suspense after watching a known film several times: how?
1) Pleasurable fear: release tensions through pleasurable fear. “catharsis”-purgation of emotion (pity and fear) through art resulting in renewal.
2) The importance of cues: Elizabeth M. Alfert study “similarity of reactions to film-induced threat and direct threat
3) Primitivized behaviour: Richard Lazarus “Stress… makes man more similar to lower animals”. Stress-inducing moments= global reactions and suppression of the superego and rationality which leads to vulnerability to manipulative efforts of filmmakers and extreme receptiveness to imagery.
4) How filmmaker primitives responses of the audience? Identification with imperilled people (good or bad characters). Spectator in a helpless position and sometimes superior which causes frustration.