document_title: Alfred Hitchcock

question_text: how did hitchcock began his film career in 1919

question_tokens: how did hitchcock began his film career in 1919

text: Alfred Hitchcock

text: Biography[edit]

text: Early life: 1899–1930[edit]

text: Childhood, education and early writing[edit]

text: Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 the youngest of three children (a girl and two boys) to William Hitchcock (1862–1914), a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan, 1863–1942).[1][2] The family lived in their home above their grocers' shop at 517 The High Road, Leytonstone, then part of Essex (now part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest). His parents were Roman Catholics and both were of half-English and half-Irish ancestry.[3] He was named after his father's brother. Hitchcock was raised as a Roman Catholic, and sent to Salesian College, Battersea, and the Jesuit grammar school St Ignatius' College in Stamford Hill, London.[4][5]

text: Hitchcock often described a lonely and sheltered childhood that was worsened by his obesity.[6] In a 1972 interview Hitchcock anecdotally recalled the childhood incidents which might have led to his interest in macabre and psychological themes in his later film career. In one instance, Hitchcock related his mother picking him up at three months old and saying "Boo" to him only to evoke an unexpected lifelong response. In another anecdotal recollection, Hitchcock recalls that around age five, his father punished him for bad behaviour by sending him to the local police station, where Hitchcock was instructed by his father to request that the officer lock him away for five minutes.[7] According to Hitchcock's anecdotal recollection, this incident implanted a lifelong fear of policemen in Hitchcock, and such harsh treatment and wrongful accusations are frequent themes in his films.[8]

text: When he was six, the family moved to Salmon Lane, Limehouse, and bought two stores, which they ran as a fishmongers' and fish-and-chip shop. They lived above the latter at 130 Salmon Lane.[9] Sources vary on Hitchcock's performance in school. Gene Adair reports that by "most accounts, Alfred was only an average, or slightly above-average, student",[10] although Patrick McGilligan writes that Hitchcock "certainly" excelled academically.[11] When Hitchcock was 14, he left St Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London.[12] Within a year, when Hitchcock was 15, his father died. After leaving school, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with Henley's, an electrical cable company.[13]

text: During the First World War, Hitchcock was enlisted to serve in the British Army; he was ultimately excused from military service with a 'C3' classification due to his size, height or an unnamed medical condition, but was nonetheless "able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home".[14] Hitchcock joined a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917.[14] His military stint was limited, and he mainly engaged in theoretical briefings, weekend drills and exercises. Hitchcock would march around London's Hyde Park and was required to wear military puttees, though he never mastered the proper wrapping of them.[15]

text: While working at Henley's, Hitchcock began to dabble in creative writing. The company's in-house publication The Henley Telegraph was founded in 1919, and he often submitted short articles,[16] eventually becoming one of its most prolific contributors.[17][18] His first piece, "Gas" (1919), published in the first issue, tells of a young woman who imagines that she is being assaulted one night in Paris—only for the twist to reveal that it was all just a hallucination in the dentist's chair induced by the anaesthetic.[19]

text: Hitchcock's second piece was "The Woman's Part" (1919), which involves the conflicted emotions that a husband feels as he watches his actress wife perform onstage.[20] "Sordid" (1920) surrounds an attempt to buy a sword from an antiques dealer, with another twist ending. The short story "And There Was No Rainbow" (1920) is Hitchcock's first brush with material in which characters find them in suddenly unexpected and uncomfortable situations. A man goes looking for a brothel, only to stumble into the house of his friend's wife. "What's Who?" (1920) at first glance seems to be a precursor to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine, being a short dialogue piece which resembles antic dialogue from a music hall skit. It captures the confusion that occurs when a group of actors decide to put together a sketch in which they will impersonate themselves. In the story’s forty sentences, confusion regarding the questions “Who’s me?” and "Who’s you?” incrementally rises to comic heights.[21] "The History of Pea Eating" (1920) is a satirical parody on the various attempts that people have made over the centuries to eat peas successfully. His final piece, "Fedora" (1921), is his shortest and most enigmatic contribution. It also gives a strikingly accurate description of his future wife Alma Reville, whom he had not yet met.[22]

text: British silent films[edit]

text: Hitchcock was a film fan from his teenage years, and in 1919 began his film career at the age of twenty, working as a title card designer for the London branch of the American firm Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, at Islington Studios.[23] After Famous Players-Lasky pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock stayed on as part of the studio staff. He was hired by a new firm run by Michael Balcon and others after being noticed at work on the short film Always Tell Your Wife in early 1923.[24] In time Balcon's company took the name Gainsborough Pictures.[25][26]

text: The British Film Institute summarises Balcon's discovery of Hitchcock succinctly: "But it was while working (on Always Tell Your Wife) with (Seymour) Hicks that Hitchcock was spotted by tyro producer Michael Balcon, who made the young man an integral part of his new company, beginning with Woman to Woman (d. Graham Cutts, 1923), filmed at Islington a few months later."[27] Hitchcock's rise from title designer to film director took five years. During this period, he became an unusual combination of screenwriter, art director and assistant director on a series of five films for Balcon and director Graham Cutts: Woman to Woman (1923), The White Shadow (1924), The Passionate Adventure (1924), The Blackguard (1925) and The Prude's Fall (1925).[28]

text: Hitchcock's 1925 collaboration with Cutts, The Blackguard (German: Die Prinzessin und der Geiger, 1925), was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, where Hitchcock observed part of the making of F. W. Murnau's film The Last Laugh (1924).[29] He was impressed with Murnau's work and later used many techniques for the set design in his own productions.[30] In a book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock also said that he was influenced by Fritz Lang's film Destiny (1921).[28] He was likewise influenced by other foreign filmmakers whose work he absorbed as one of the earliest members of the "seminal" London Film Society, formed in 1925, which promoted such directors as Paul Leni, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein.[31][32]

text: Hitchcock's first few films faced a string of bad luck. His first directing project came in 1922 with the aptly titled Number 13, filmed in London.[33] The production was cancelled because of financial problems and the few scenes that had been finished at that point have since been lost.[33] Michael Balcon gave Hitchcock another opportunity for a directing credit with The Pleasure Garden (1925), a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka, which he made at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich in the summer of 1925.[34] The film was a commercial flop.[35] Next, Hitchcock directed a drama called The Mountain Eagle (1926), possibly released in the United States under the title Fear o' God. This film is lost.[36]

text: Hitchcock's luck changed with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927),[37] a suspense film about the hunt for a Jack the Ripper-type of serial killer in London.[38] Released in January 1927, it was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom.[39] As with many of his earlier works, this film was influenced by Expressionist techniques Hitchcock had witnessed first-hand in Germany.[40] Some commentators regard this piece as the first truly "Hitchcockian"[41][42] film, incorporating such themes as the misidentified or the falsely accused innocent man.[43]

text: Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock hired a publicist to help strengthen his growing reputation. On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director, Alma Reville, at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, London.[38] Alma was to become Hitchcock's closest collaborator, but her contributions to his films (some of which were credited on screen) Hitchcock would discuss only in private, as she was keen to avoid public attention.[44] In 1928, Hitchcock and Alma purchased a house named 'Winter's Grace', situated on Stroud Lane, Shamley Green, in Surrey. The building was originally a Tudor farmhouse dating from the 16th century. The Hitchcocks lived most weekdays at 153 Cromwell Road in London, whilst spending their weekends in Shamley Green entertaining guests.[45] Their only child, their daughter Patricia, was born on 7 July of the same year.[46]

text: Early sound films[edit]

text: Hitchcock began work on his tenth film, Blackmail (1929), when its production company British International Pictures (BIP) decided to convert its Elstree facility to sound, and to utilise that new technology in Blackmail. It was an early "talkie", often cited by film historians as a landmark film,[47] and is among the first British talkie feature films.[48][49]

text: Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum.[50] It also features one of his longest cameo appearances, which shows him being bothered by a small boy as he reads a book on the London Underground.[51] In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies,[52] Hitchcock explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film, stressing the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman suspected of murder.[53] During this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP musical film revue Elstree Calling (1930) and directed a short film featuring two Film Weekly scholarship winners entitled An Elastic Affair (1930).[54]

text: In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon[34] at Gaumont British.[55] His first film for the company The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) was a success and his second The 39 Steps (1935) was a notable film for Hitchcock with the British Film Institute ranking it the fourth best British film of the 20th century.[56] The film was acclaimed in the UK, and it made Hitchcock a star in the US, and established the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" Madeleine Carroll as the template for his succession of ice cold and elegant leading ladies.[57] Screenwriter Robert Towne remarked, "It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps".[58] This film was one of the first to exploit a "MacGuffin", a rather peripheral driver of the narrative. In The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans. In 1966, Hitchcock explained to French director François Truffaut:

text: [MacGuffin] might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh, that's a Macguffin". The first man asks, "What's a Macguffin?" "Well," the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands". The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands, and the other one answers, "Well then, that's no Macguffin!" So you see that a Macguffin is actually nothing at all.[59]

text: Hitchcock released two espionage thrillers in 1936. The first was titled Sabotage and was loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel titled The Secret Agent about a woman who discovers that her husband, a London cinema owner, is a subversive terrorist. Hitchcock's second espionage thriller in 1936 was unrelated to Conrad though titled Secret Agent, and was loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent written by W. Somerset Maugham. Sabotage in particular has received acclaim, and in 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 44th best British film ever.[50]

text: Hitchcock's next major success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), a fast-paced film about the search for kindly old Englishwoman Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Bandrika.[60] The Guardian called the film "one of the greatest train movies from the genre's golden era", and a contender for the "title of best comedy thriller ever made".[61] The BFI ranked it the 35th best British film of the 20th century.[56] The film saw Hitchcock receive the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, the only time he received an award for his direction.[62]

text: Hitchcock was lauded in Britain, where he was dubbed "Alfred the Great" by Picturegoer magazine.[63] Additionally, his reputation was beginning to soar overseas by the end of the 1930s, with a New York Times feature writer stating: "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not. Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of screen melodramas in the world".[64] Variety magazine referred to him as "probably the best native director in England".[65]

text: Early Hollywood years: 1931–1945[edit]

text: Hollywood and the Selznick contract[edit]

text: David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939,[66] and set to end in 1946, which brought the Hitchcocks to Hollywood.[67] The suspense and gallows humour that had become Hitchcock's trademark in his films continued to appear in his American productions. The working arrangements with Selznick were less than ideal. Selznick suffered from constant financial problems, and Hitchcock was often displeased with Selznick's creative control over his films. In a later interview, Hitchcock commented, "[Selznick] was the Big Producer. […] Producer was king, The most flattering thing Mr. Selznick ever said about me—and it shows you the amount of control—he said I was the 'only director' he'd 'trust with a film'."[68]

text: Selznick lent Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock's films himself. Selznick made only a few films each year, as did fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, so he did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. Hitchcock was quickly impressed with the superior resources of the American studios compared with the financial limits that he had often faced in Britain.[69]

text: The Selznick picture Rebecca (1940) was Hitchcock's first American film, set in a Hollywood version of England's Cornwall and based on a novel by English novelist Daphne du Maurier. The film stars Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. The story concerns a naïve (and unnamed) young woman who marries a widowed aristocrat. She goes to live in his huge English country house, and struggles with the lingering reputation of his elegant and worldly first wife Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances. The film won Best Picture at the 13th Academy Awards.[70] The statuette was given to Selznick, as the film's producer.[70] Hitchcock was nominated for the Best Director award, his first of five such nominations, but did not win.[70][71]

text: There were additional problems between Selznick and Hitchcock, with Selznick known to impose restrictive rules on Hitchcock. At the same time, Selznick complained about Hitchcock's "goddamn jigsaw cutting", which meant that the producer did not have nearly the leeway to create his own film as he liked, but had to follow Hitchcock's vision of the finished product.[72]

text: Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940) with its plot set in Europe, based on Vincent Sheean's Personal History and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock, along with many other British subjects, felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while their country was at war; his concern resulted in a film that overtly supported the British war effort.[73] Filmed in the first year of the Second World War, the film was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as fictionally covered by an American newspaper reporter (portrayed by Joel McCrea). The film mixed footage of European scenes with scenes filmed on a Hollywood backlot. It avoided direct references to Nazism, Nazi Germany and Germans to comply with Hollywood's Production Code censorship at the time.[74]

text: Early war years[edit]

text: Hitchcock's films were diverse during the 1940s, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), to the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), to the bleak film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943). In September 1940 the Hitchcocks bought the 200-acre (0.81 km2) Cornwall Ranch near Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ranch became the holiday home of the Hitchcocks. Their primary residence was an English-style home in Bel Air which was purchased in 1942.[75] Suspicion (1941) marks Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. It is set in England, and Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz, California for the English coastline sequence.[23] This film is the first of four projects on which Cary Grant worked with Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant was cast in a sinister role.[23] Grant plays a penniless dishonest con-artist whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his shy young English wife (Fontaine).[76] In one scene Hitchcock uses a lightbulb to illuminate what might be a fatal glass of milk that Grant is bringing to his wife. The character that Grant plays in the film is a killer in the book upon which the film was based, Before the Fact by Francis Iles, but Hitchcock and the studio felt that, among other issues, Grant's image would be tarnished by that. So Hitchcock settled for an ambiguous finale, although, as he stated to François Truffaut, a murder would have suited him better.[77] Joan Fontaine won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance which extended Hitchcock's reputation for being able to direct award winning films in the United States.[78][23]

text: Saboteur (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal during the decade. Hitchcock was forced by management at Universal Studios to use Universal contract player Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane (a freelancer who signed a one-picture deal with Universal), both known for their work in comedies and light dramas.[79] Breaking with Hollywood conventions of the time, Hitchcock did extensive location filming, especially in New York City, and depicted a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty. That year, he also directed Have You Heard?, a photographic dramatisation of the dangers of rumours during wartime, for Life magazine.[80] Hitchcock also wrote a mystery story for Look magazine in 1943, "The Murder of Monty Woolley". This was a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to inspect the pictures for clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick and make-up man Guy Pearce. The article was reprinted in Games Magazine in November/December 1980.[81]

text: Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock's personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films.[82] It is about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer. Hitchcock again filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa during the summer of 1942. Working at 20th Century Fox, Hitchcock adapted a script of John Steinbeck's, which recorded the experiences of the survivors of a German U-boat attack in the film Lifeboat (1944). The action sequences were shot in a small boat in the studio water tank. The locale posed problems for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance. That was solved by having Hitchcock's image appear in a newspaper that William Bendix is reading in the boat, showing the director in a before-and-after advertisement for "Reduco-Obesity Slayer".[83] While at Fox, Hitchcock seriously considered directing the film version of A. J. Cronin's novel about a Catholic priest in China, The Keys of the Kingdom, but the plans for this fell through. John M. Stahl ended up directing the 1944 film, which was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starred Gregory Peck.[84]

text: Wartime non-fiction films[edit]

text: Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944. While there he made two short films in French for the British Ministry of Information: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache.[85] The two British propaganda films made for the Free French were the only films that Hitchcock made in the French language, and they "feature typical Hitchcockian touches".[86] On his motivation for making the films, Hitchcock stated: "I felt the need to make a little contribution to the war effort, and I was both overweight and over-age for military service. I knew that if I did nothing, I'd regret it for the rest of my life."[87] From late June to late July 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a Holocaust documentary which used footage provided by the Allied Forces.[88] It was produced by Sidney Bernstein of the British Ministry of Information, and was assembled in London. Bernstein brought his future 1948–49 production partner Hitchcock on board as a consultant for the film editing process for the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information.[88][89]

text: The film-makers were commissioned to provide irrefutable evidence of the Nazis' crimes, and the film recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The film was originally intended to be broadcast to the Germans following the Second World War, but the British government deemed it too traumatic to be shown to the already-shocked post-War population.[90] Instead, it was transferred in 1952 from the British War Office film vaults to London's Imperial War Museum and remained unreleased until 1985, when an edited version was first broadcast in May 1985 as an episode of the PBS network series Frontline under the title which the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps.[91][92] The full-length version of the film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was completed in 2014, and was restored by film scholars at the Imperial War Museum.[88]

text: Post-war Hollywood years: 1945–1953[edit]

text: Later Selznick films[edit]

text: Hitchcock worked for Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explores psychoanalysis[93] and features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. Gregory Peck plays amnesiac Dr. Anthony Edwardes under the treatment of analyst Dr. Peterson (Ingrid Bergman), who falls in love with him while trying to unlock his repressed past.[94] The dream sequence as it appears in the film is ten minutes shorter than was originally envisioned, having been edited by Selznick to make it "play" more effectively.[95] Two point-of-view shots were achieved by building a large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and out-sized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on some copies of the black-and-white film. The original musical score by Miklós Rózsa makes use of the electronic theremin, and some of it was later adapted by the composer into Rozsa's Piano Concerto Op. 31 (1967) for piano and orchestra.[96]

text: Notorious (1946) followed Spellbound. Hitchcock gave a book-length interview to François Truffaut, in which he said that Selznick had sold the director, the two stars (Grant and Bergman), and the screenplay (by Ben Hecht) to RKO Radio Pictures as a "package" for $500,000 due to cost overruns on Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946). Notorious stars Hitchcock regulars Bergman and Grant, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium and South America. His prescient use of uranium as a plot device led to Hitchcock's being briefly under Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance. McGilligan writes that Hitchcock consulted Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about the development of an atomic bomb. Selznick complained the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news stories of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.[97]

text: Sidney Bernstein and Transatlantic Pictures[edit]

text: Hitchcock formed an independent production company with his friend Sidney Bernstein called Transatlantic Pictures where he made two films, one of which was his first film made in colour and making use of long takes. With Rope (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat (1944). The film appears to have been shot in a single take, but it was actually shot in 10 takes ranging from 4-½ to 10 minutes each, a 10-minute length of film being the maximum that a camera's film magazine could hold at the time. Some transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place. It features James Stewart in the leading role, and was the first of four films that Stewart made with Hitchcock. It was inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Under Capricorn (1949), set in 19th century Australia, also uses the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black-and-white films for several years. Transatlantic Pictures became inactive after these two unsuccessful films, however, Hitchcock continued to participate in the production and ownership his own films for the rest of his life.[98][99]

text: Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950) at studios in Elstree, England where he had worked during his British International Pictures contract many years before.[100] He matched one of Warner Bros.'most popular stars, Jane Wyman, with the expatriate German actress Marlene Dietrich and used several prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding, Richard Todd and Alastair Sim.[101] This was Hitchcock's first proper production for Warner Bros., which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties.[102]

text: His film Strangers on a Train (1951) was based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. In it, Hitchcock combined many elements from his preceding films. He approached Dashiell Hammett to write the dialogue, but Raymond Chandler took over, then left over disagreements with the director.[103] In the film, two men casually meet, one of whom speculates on a foolproof method to murder; he suggests that two people, each wishing to do away with someone, should each perform the other's murder. Farley Granger's role was as the innocent victim of the scheme, while Robert Walker, previously known for "boy-next-door" roles, played the villain.[104] I Confess (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest.[105]

text: Canonical Hitchcock films: 1954–1960[edit]

text: Early peak years: From Rear Window to 1957[edit]

text: I Confess was followed by three popular colour films starring Grace Kelly. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the stage play by Frederick Knott. Ray Milland plays the scheming villain, an ex-tennis pro who tries to murder his unfaithful wife (Kelly) for her money. She kills the hired assassin in self-defence, so Milland manipulates the evidence to make it look like a premeditated murder by his wife. Her lover Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) and Police Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) work urgently to save her from execution.[106] Hitchcock experimented with 3D cinematography for Dial M.[107]

text: Hitchcock moved to Paramount Pictures and filmed Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Kelly again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Stewart's character is a photographer (based on Robert Capa) who must temporarily use a wheelchair. Out of boredom, he begins observing his neighbours across the courtyard, and then becomes convinced that one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Stewart tries to convince both his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) and his glamorous model-girlfriend (Kelly, whom screenwriter John Michael Hayes based on his own wife), and eventually he succeeds.[108] As with Lifeboat and Rope, the principal characters are depicted in confined or cramped quarters, in this case to Stewart's small studio apartment overlooking a large courtyard. Hitchcock uses close-ups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions to all that he sees, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment".[108]

text: From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents.[109] While his films had made Hitchcock's name strongly associated with suspense, the TV series made Hitchcock a celebrity himself. His irony-tinged voice and signature droll delivery, gallows humour, iconic image and mannerisms became instantly recognisable and were often the subject of parody. The title-sequence of the show pictured a minimalist caricature of Hitchcock's profile (he drew it himself; it is composed of only nine strokes), which his real silhouette then filled. His introductions before the stories in his programme always included some sort of wry humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are now shown with a sign "Two chairs—no waiting!". He directed 18 episodes of the TV series himself, which aired from 1955 to 1965 in two versions. It became The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1962 with NBC broadcasting the final episode on 10 May 1965.[109]

text: The series theme tune was Funeral March of a Marionette, by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893),[110] the composer of the 1859 opera, Faust. The composer Bernard Herrmann suggested the music. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra included the piece on one of their extended play 45-rpm discs for RCA Victor during the 1950s. In the 1980s, a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was produced for television, making use of Hitchcock's original introductions in a colourised form.[109] Hitchcock also appears as a character in the popular juvenile detective book series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The long-running detective series was created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first several books, although other authors took over after he left the series. The Three Investigators—Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Peter Crenshaw—were amateur detectives, slightly younger than the Hardy Boys. In the introduction to each book, "Alfred Hitchcock" introduces the mystery, and he sometimes refers a case to the boys to solve. At the end of each book, the boys report to Hitchcock, and sometimes give him a memento of their case.[109]

text: In 1955, Hitchcock became a United States citizen.[111] The same year, his third Grace Kelly film, To Catch a Thief, was released; it is set in the French Riviera, and pairs Kelly with Cary Grant. Grant plays retired thief John Robie, who becomes the prime suspect for a spate of robberies in the Riviera. A thrill-seeking American heiress played by Kelly surmises his true identity and tries to seduce him. "Despite the obvious age disparity between Grant and Kelly and a lightweight plot, the witty script (loaded with double entendres) and the good-natured acting proved a commercial success."[112] It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly. She married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and ended her film career. Hitchcock then remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956. This time, the film starred James Stewart and Doris Day, who sang the theme song "Que Sera, Sera", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song and became a big hit for her. They play a couple whose son is kidnapped to prevent them from interfering with an assassination. As in the 1934 film, the climax takes place at the Royal Albert Hall, London.[113]

text: At the height of Hitchcock's success in 1956, he was also asked to introduce a set of books with his name attached. The series was a collection of short stories by popular short-story writers, primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. These titles included Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew, Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock's A Hangman's Dozen, Alfred Hitchcock's Stories Not For the Nervous and Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful. Hitchcock himself was not actually involved in the reading, reviewing, editing or selection of the short stories. Some notable writers whose works were used in the collection include Shirley Jackson (Strangers in Town, The Lottery), T. H. White (The Once and Future King), Robert Bloch, H. G. Wells (The War of the Worlds), Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and the creator of The Three Investigators, Robert Arthur. In a similar manner, Hitchcock's name was licensed for a digest-sized monthly, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which has been published since 1956.[114]

text: The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Hitchcock to star Henry Fonda, playing a Stork Club musician mistaken for a liquor store thief, who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (Vera Miles) emotionally collapses under the strain. Hitchcock told Truffaut that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the subject and was embedded in many scenes.[115]

text: Later peak years: From Vertigo to Psycho[edit]

text: Hitchcock's next film, Vertigo (1958) again starred James Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Stewart plays "Scottie", a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia, who develops an obsession with a woman that he has been hired to shadow (Novak). Scottie's obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock does not opt for a happy ending. Some critics, including Donald Spoto and Roger Ebert, agree that Vertigo is the director's most personal and revealing film, dealing with the Pygmalion-like obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman that he desires. Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death than any other work in his filmography.[117]

text: Vertigo contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts that has been copied many times by filmmakers commonly referred to as a dolly zoom. The film premiered in the San Sebastián International Film Festival, where Hitchcock won a Silver Seashell.[118] Vertigo is considered a classic today, but it met with some negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release. This poor box office performance signaled that this film would prove to be the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.[119] Its critical reputation grew. In the 2002 Sight & Sound polls, it ranked just behind Citizen Kane (1941); ten years later, in the same magazine, it was voted by critics as the best film ever made.[116] By this time, Hitchcock had significantly shown signs of acclimatizing as an American citizen and had filmed in many areas of the United States from coast to coast.[120]

text: Hitchcock followed Vertigo with three more successful films, which are also recognised as among his best films: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). In North by Northwest, Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government secret agent.[121] He is hotly pursued across the United States by enemy agents, apparently one of them being Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who is in reality working undercover. During its opening two-week run at Radio City Music Hall, the film grossed $404,056, setting a record in that theatre's non-holiday gross.[122] At that time, Time magazine called the film "smoothly troweled and thoroughly entertaining".[123] A. H. Weiler of The New York Times made it a "Critic's Pick" and said it was the "year's most scenic, intriguing and merriest chase"; Weiler complimented the two leads:

text: Cary Grant, a veteran member of the Hitchcock acting varsity, was never more at home than in this role of the advertising-man-on-the-lam... In casting Eva Marie Saint as his romantic vis-à-vis, Mr. Hitchcock has plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore.[124]

text: Psycho is among Hitchcock's most widely seen films.[125][126] Produced on a constrained budget of $800,000, it was shot in black-and-white on a spare set using crew members from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.[127] The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine and the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer became the defining hallmarks of a new horror film genre and have been copied by many authors of subsequent films.[128] The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of cinemas as people had to wait for the next showing. It broke box-office records in the United Kingdom, France, South America, the United States and Canada and was a moderate success in Australia for a brief period.[98] It was the most profitable film of Hitchcock's career; Hitchcock personally earned well in excess of $15 million. He subsequently swapped his rights to Psycho and his TV anthology for 150,000 shares of MCA, making him the third largest shareholder in MCA Inc. and his own boss at Universal, in theory at least, but that did not stop them from interfering with him.[98][99] Following the first film directed by Hitchcock, Psycho has since become an American horror franchise consisting of six films loosely based on the Psycho novels by Robert Bloch, namely Psycho, Psycho II, Psycho III, Bates Motel, Psycho IV: The Beginning, the scene-by-scene colour 1998 remake of the original film, and additional merchandise spanning various media.[129]

text: After 1961 to death: 1961–1980[edit]

text: After 1961[edit]

text: The Birds (1963), inspired by a short story by English author Daphne du Maurier and by a news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in Capitola, California, was Hitchcock's 49th film, and the location scenes were filmed in Bodega Bay, California.[130] Newcomer Tippi Hedren co-starred with Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette. The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing live and animated sequences. The cause of the birds' attack is left unanswered.[131]

text: Hitchcock cast Hedren again opposite Sean Connery in Marnie (1964), a romantic drama and psychological thriller. Decades later, Hedren called Hitchcock a misogynist and said that Hitchcock effectively ended her career by keeping her to an exclusive contract for two years when she rebuffed his sexual advances.[132][133] However, Hedren appeared in two TV shows during the two years after Marnie.[134] In 2012, Hedren described Hitchcock as a "sad character"; a man of "unusual genius", yet "evil, and deviant, almost to the point of dangerous, because of the effect that he could have on people that were totally unsuspecting".[135] In response, a Daily Telegraph article quoted several actresses who had worked with Hitchcock, including Eva Marie Saint, Doris Day and Kim Novak, none of whom shared Hedren's opinion about him.[136] Novak, who worked on Hitchcock's Vertigo, told the Telegraph "I never saw him make a pass at anybody or act strange to anybody".[137]

text: Psycho and The Birds had unconventional soundtracks: the screeching strings played in the murder scene in Psycho were unusually dissonant, and The Birds dispensed with any conventional score, instead using a new technique of electronically produced sound effects. Bernard Herrmann composed the former and was a consultant on the latter,[138] also acting as composer for Marnie.[139]

text: Failing health reduced Hitchcock's output during the last two decades of his life. Biographer Stephen Rebello claimed Universal "forced" two movies on him, Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969).[99][98] Both were spy thrillers set with Cold War-related themes. The first, Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, precipitated the bitter end of the twelve-year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann.[140] Herrmann was sacked when Hitchcock was unsatisfied with his score, and replaced with British composer John Addison. Topaz (1969), based on a Leon Uris novel, is partly set in Cuba. Both received mixed reviews from critics.[141]

text: Hitchcock returned to Britain to make his penultimate film Frenzy (1972). After two espionage films, the plot marks a return to the murder thriller genre, and is based upon the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square. The plot centres on a serial killer in contemporary London. The basic story recycles his early film The Lodger. Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a volatile barman with a history of explosive anger, becomes the prime suspect in the investigation into the "Necktie Murders", which are actually committed by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster).[142] This time, Hitchcock makes the victim and villain kindreds, rather than opposites, as in Strangers on a Train. Only one of them, however, has crossed the line to murder.[142] For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had previously been taboo, in one of his films. He also shows rare sympathy for the policeman on the case and his comic domestic life.[143]

text: Biographers have noted that Hitchcock had always pushed the limits of film censorship, often managing to fool Joseph Breen, the longtime head of Hollywood's Production Code. Many times Hitchcock slipped in subtle hints of improprieties forbidden by censorship until the mid-1960s. Yet Patrick McGilligan wrote that Breen and others often realised that Hitchcock was inserting such things and were actually amused as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences".[144] Beginning with Torn Curtain and especially with Frenzy, Hitchcock was finally able to blatantly include plot elements previously forbidden in American films with the experimental use of nudity in his 1972 film.[145]

text: Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film. It relates the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler, played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern, making a living from her phony powers. William Devane, Karen Black, Katherine Helmond and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It is the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams. While Family Plot was based on the Victor Canning novel The Rainbird Pattern, the novel's tone is more sinister and dark than what Hitchcock wanted for the film. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman originally wrote the film with a dark tone but was pushed to a lighter, more comical tone by Hitchcock.[146][147]

text: Last project and death[edit]

text: Near the end of his life, Hitchcock had worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, collaborating with James Costigan, Ernest Lehman and David Freeman. Despite some preliminary work, the screenplay was never filmed. This was caused primarily by Hitchcock's seriously declining health and his concerns for his wife, Alma, who had suffered a stroke. The screenplay was eventually published in Freeman's 1999 book The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock.[148][149]

text: Hitchcock died aged 80 in his Bel Air home of renal failure on 29 April 1980.[75][150] While biographer Spoto wrote that Hitchcock "rejected suggestions that he allow a priest […] to come for a visit, or celebrate a quiet, informal ritual at the house for his comfort", Jesuit priest Mark Henninger wrote that he and fellow priest Tom Sullivan celebrated Mass at the filmmaker's home; Sullivan heard Hitchcock's confession.[151] He was survived by his wife and their daughter.[152] Lew Wasserman, board chairman and chief executive officer of MCA Inc. and previously Hitchcock’s longtime agent, stated:

text: I am deeply saddened by the death of my close friend and colleague, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, whose death today at his home deprives us all of a great artist and an even greater human being... It is (his) continuing influence, embodied in the magnificent series of films he has given the world, during the last half-century, that will preserve his great spirit, his humour and his wit, not only for us but for succeeding generations of film-goers.[75]

text: Hitchcock's funeral Mass was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills on 30 April 1980, after which his body was cremated and his remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean on 10 May 1980.[153]

text: Aesthetic[edit]

text: Psychology of characters[edit]

text: Hitchcock's films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers such as the unresolved psychopathology of the Norman Bates character in Psycho.[154] In North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him. In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself from a clinging mother (Jessica Tandy). The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolises his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne). Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflicting relationship with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). Norman Bates has unresolved psychopathological troubles with his mother in Psycho.[155]

text: Hitchcock heroines tend to be blondes.[156][157] The famous victims in The Lodger are all blondes. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs. In Marnie (1964), the title character (played by Tippi Hedren) is a thief. In To Catch a Thief (1955), Francie (Grace Kelly) offers to help a man she believes is a burglar. In Rear Window, Lisa (Grace Kelly again) risks her life by breaking into Lars Thorwald's apartment. In North by Northwest and Vertigo the main female character is blonde-haired. Tippi Hedren is the main character in "The Birds" and appears to be the main subject of the Bird's attacks. Ingrid Bergman, who Hitchcock directed three times (Spellbound, Notorious and Under Capricorn) has what is considered dark blonde or light brown hair. The best-known example is in Psycho where Janet Leigh's unfortunate character steals $40,000 and is murdered by a reclusive psychopath. Hitchcock's last blonde heroine was Barbara Harris as a phony psychic turned amateur sleuth in Family Plot (1976), his final film. In the same film, the diamond smuggler played by Karen Black could also fit that role, as she wears a long blonde wig in various scenes and becomes increasingly uncomfortable about her line of work. The English 'Hitchcock blonde' was based on his preference for the heroines to have an "indirect" sex appeal of English women—ranging from the aloof schoolteacher to the dangerous femme fatale—with Hitchcock stating to Truffaut:

text: I think the most interesting women, sexually, are the English women. I feel that the English women, the Swedes, the northern Germans and Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian and the French women. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she'll probably pull a man's pants open. […] Without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless. There's no possibility to discover sex.[75]

text: Themes, motifs and signature appearances[edit]

text: Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense,[158] the audience as voyeur,[159] and his well-known "MacGuffin," a plot device that is essential to the characters on the screen, but is irrelevant to the audience. Thus, the MacGuffin was always hazily described (in North by Northwest, Leo G. Carroll describes James Mason as an "importer-exporter"). A central theme of Hitchcock's films was murder and the psychology behind it.[160][161] His work often features the theme of fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.[156][157]

text: In a 1963 interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, Hitchcock was asked how in spite of appearing to be a pleasant, innocuous man, he seemed to enjoy making films involving suspense and terrifying crime. He responded:

text: I'm English. The English use a lot of imagination with their crimes. I don't get such a kick out of anything as much as out of imagining a crime. When I'm writing a story and I come to a crime, I think happily: now wouldn't it be nice to have him die like this? And then, even more happily, I think: at this point people will start yelling. It must be because I spent three years studying with the Jesuits. They used to terrify me to death, with everything, and now I'm getting my own back by terrifying other people.[162]

text: Hitchcock appears briefly in most of his own films. For example, he is seen struggling to get a double bass onto a train (Strangers on a Train), walking dogs out of a pet shop (The Birds), fixing a neighbour's clock (Rear Window), as a shadow (Family Plot), sitting at a table in a photograph (Dial M for Murder) and missing a bus (North by Northwest).[163]

text: Style of working[edit]

text: Writing[edit]

text: Hitchcock was closely related to his writers during the writing process in the production of his films.[164] In an interview with Roger Ebert in 1969, Hitchcock elaborated further:

text: Once the screenplay is finished, I'd just as soon not make the film at all […] I have a strongly visual mind. I visualise a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don't look at the script while I'm shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score […] When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception.[165]

text: In Writing with Hitchcock, a book-length study of Hitchcock's working method with his writers, author Steven DeRosa noted that, "Although he rarely did any actual 'writing', especially on his Hollywood productions, Hitchcock supervised and guided his writers through every draft, insisting on strict attention to detail and a preference for telling the story through visual rather than verbal means. While this exasperated some writers, others admitted the director inspired them to do their very best work. Hitchcock often emphasised that he took no screen credit for the writing of his films."[166]

text: Storyboards and production[edit]

text: The number of books and articles written about Hitchcock has led to some innocent and some invented mythmaking concerning his style of directing and producing films. For example, according to some commentators, Hitchcock's films were extensively storyboarded to the finest detail. He was reported to have never even bothered looking through the viewfinder, since he did not need to, though in publicity photos he was shown doing so. He also used this as an excuse to never have to change his films from his initial vision. If a studio asked him to change a film, he would claim that it was already shot in a single way, and that there were no alternate takes to consider. However, this view of Hitchcock as a director who relied more on pre-production than on the actual production itself has been challenged by the book Hitchcock at Work, written by Bill Krohn, the American correspondent of French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.[167] Krohn, after investigating several script revisions, notes to other production personnel written by or to Hitchcock alongside inspection of storyboards, and other production material, has observed that Hitchcock's work often deviated from how the screenplay was written or how the film was originally envisioned.[167] He noted that the myth of storyboards in relation to Hitchcock, often regurgitated by generations of commentators on his films, was to a great degree perpetuated by Hitchcock himself or the publicity arm of the studios. For example, the celebrated crop-spraying sequence of North by Northwest was not storyboarded at all. After the scene was filmed, the publicity department asked Hitchcock to make storyboards to promote the film and Hitchcock in turn hired an artist to match the scenes in detail.[168]

text: Even when storyboards were made, scenes that were shot differed from them significantly. Krohn's extensive analysis of the production of Hitchcock classics like Notorious reveals that Hitchcock was flexible enough to change a film's conception during its production. Another example Krohn notes is the American remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, whose shooting schedule commenced without a finished script and moreover went over schedule, something that, as Krohn notes, was not an uncommon occurrence on many of Hitchcock's films, including Strangers on a Train and Topaz. While Hitchcock did do a great deal of preparation for all his films, he was fully cognisant that the actual film-making process often deviated from the best-laid plans and was flexible to adapt to the changes and needs of production as his films were not free from the normal hassles faced and common routines utilised during many other film productions.[168]

text: Krohn's work also sheds light on Hitchcock's practice of generally shooting in chronological order, which he notes sent many films over budget and over schedule and, more importantly, differed from the standard operating procedure of Hollywood in the Studio System Era. Equally important is Hitchcock's tendency to shoot alternate takes of scenes. This differed from coverage in that the films were not necessarily shot from varying angles so as to give the editor options to shape the film how he/she chooses (often under the producer's aegis).[169] Rather they represented Hitchcock's tendency to give himself options in the editing room, where he would provide advice to his editors after viewing a rough cut of the work. According to Krohn, this and a great deal of other information revealed through his research of Hitchcock's personal papers, script revisions and the like refute the notion of Hitchcock as a director who was always in control of his films, whose vision of his films did not change during production, which Krohn notes has remained the central long-standing myth of Alfred Hitchcock. Both his fastidiousness and attention to detail also found their way into each film poster for his films. Hitchcock preferred to work with the best talent of his day—film poster designers such as Bill Gold and Saul Bass—who would produce posters that accurately represented his films.[170][168]

text: Approach towards actors[edit]

text: Hitchcock became known for his alleged observation, "Actors are cattle".[171] He once said that he first made this remark as early as the late 1920s, in connection to stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures. However, the actor Michael Redgrave said that Hitchcock had made the statement during the filming of The Lady Vanishes (1938). Later, in Hollywood, during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Carole Lombard brought some heifers onto the set with name tags of Lombard, Robert Montgomery and Gene Raymond, the stars of the film, to surprise the director.[172] Hitchcock said he was misquoted: "I said 'Actors should be treated like cattle'."[173]

text: Much of Hitchcock's supposed dislike of actors has been exaggerated. Hitchcock simply did not tolerate the method approach, as he believed that actors should only concentrate on their performances and leave work on script and character to the directors and screenwriters. In a Sight & Sound interview, he stated that, 'the method actor is OK in the theatre because he has a free space to move about. But when it comes to cutting the face and what he sees and so forth, there must be some discipline'.[174] He often, as with Cary Grant (4 times) and Ingrid Bergman (3 times), used the same actors in many of his films.[175]

text: During the making of Lifeboat, Walter Slezak, who played the German villain, stated that Hitchcock knew the mechanics of acting better than anyone he knew.[176] Several critics have observed that despite his reputation as a man who disliked actors, several actors who worked with him gave fine, often brilliant performances that contributed to the film's success. Actress Dolly Haas, who was a personal friend of Hitchcock and who acted for him in the 1953 film I Confess, stated that Hitchcock regarded actors as "animated props".[177]

text: For Hitchcock, the actors, like the props, were part of the film's setting, as he said to Truffaut:

text: In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilised and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.[178]

text: Addressing his earlier statement comparing actors to cattle, Hitchcock said in an interview with François Truffaut:

text: I'm not quite sure in what context I might have made such a statement. It may have been made […] when we used actors who were simultaneously performing in stage plays. When they had a matinee, and I suspected they were allowing themselves plenty of time for a very leisurely lunch. And this meant that we had to shoot our scenes at breakneck speed so that the actors could get out on time. I couldn't help feeling that if they'd been really conscientious, they'd have swallowed their sandwich in the cab, on the way to the theatre, and get there in time to put on their make-up and go on stage. I had no use for that kind of actor.[172]

text: In the late 1950s, French New Wave critics, especially Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut, were among the first to see and promote Hitchcock's films as artistic works. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to whom they applied their auteur theory, which stresses the artistic authority of the director in the filmmaking process.[179] Hitchcock's innovations and vision have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers and actors. His influence helped start a trend for film directors such as Rohmer and Truffaut to control artistic aspects of their films without answering to the film's producer.[180]

text: Awards and honours[edit]

text: Hitchcock was a nominee and winner of a number of prestigious awards, receiving two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, five lifetime achievement awards (including the first BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), as well as being nominated five times for an Academy Award for Best Director (albeit never winning). His film Rebecca (nominated for 11 Oscars) won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940—another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, was also nominated that year.[181] Hitchcock has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, receiving one for his contribution to television and another for his work in motion pictures.[182] Following a 2007 critics' poll by Britain's Daily Telegraph in which he was ranked Britain's greatest filmmaker, one scholar wrote: "Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from the audience) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."[183][184]

text: After refusing a CBE in 1962,[185] Hitchcock received a knighthood in December 1979 when he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honours.[186][187] Asked by a reporter why it had taken the Queen so long, Hitchcock quipped, "I suppose it was a matter of carelessness".[188] Before receiving his knighthood, critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Other British directors like Sir Carol Reed and Sir Charlie Chaplin were knighted years ago, while Hitchcock, universally considered by film students to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was passed over".[189] An English Heritage blue plaque, unveiled in 1999, marks where Hitchcock lived in London at 153 Cromwell Road, Kensington and Chelsea, SW5.[190] In 2002, the magazine MovieMaker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time.[191] In 2012, Hitchcock was featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of 7 academics, journalists and historians named Hitchcock among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character".[192] Also in 2012, Hitchcock was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, in order to celebrate British cultural figures whom he most admires.[193][194]

text: Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history.[191][195] In 1978, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as "the most universally recognizable person in the world", and "a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius".[189] Hitchcock has been portrayed in several films after 2010 including Anthony Hopkins in the 2012 film Hitchcock. He was also portrayed by Toby Jones in the 2012 HBO telefilm The Girl. This telefilm depicts Hitchcock's alleged obsession with Hedren according to Hedren's posthumous biographical claims. Hedren was an actress Hitchcock brought from relative obscurity to star in his 1963 film The Birds and later in Marnie. In the telefilm version based on Hedren's account, Hitchcock becomes infatuated with his leading lady and she rebuffs his advances leading to tension and conflict during production. Kim Novak (who starred in one of Hitchcock's films) and Nora Brown (widow of one of Hitchcock's close friends) disputed the telefilm's version of events.[196]

text: In June 2013, nine restored versions of Hitchcock's early silent films, including his directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden (1925), were shown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre. Known as "The Hitchcock 9", the travelling tribute was made possible by a $3 million programme organised by the British Film Institute.[31] Roger Ashton-Griffiths portrayed Hitchcock more recently in the 2014 film Grace of Monaco. A documentary titled 78/52 on Psycho's shower scene was released on 13 October 2017. Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, the cast of participants honouring Hitchcock and Psycho included Peter Bogdanovich, Jamie Lee Curtis, Guillermo del Toro, Danny Elfman, Bret Easton Ellis, and Elijah Wood.[197]

text: Archives[edit]

text: The Alfred Hitchcock Collection is housed at the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood, California. The Hitchcock Collection includes home movies, 16 mm film shot on the set of Blackmail (1929) and Frenzy (1972), and the earliest known colour footage of Hitchcock. The Academy Film Archive also preserved many of Hitchcock's home movies. Complementing the film material are the Alfred Hitchcock Papers housed at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.[198] The David O. Selznick and the Ernest Lehman collections housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas contain material related to Hitchcock's work on the production of The Paradine Case, Rebecca, Spellbound, North by Northwest and Family Plot.[199]

text: Filmography[edit]


document_title: Book of Esther

question_text: how many chapters are there in the book of esther

root

text: Book of Esther

text: Setting and structure[edit]

text: Setting[edit]

text: The biblical Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Susa (Shushan) in the third year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus. The name Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes[3] (both deriving from the Persian Khshayārsha),[4] and Ahasuerus is usually identified in modern sources as Xerxes I,[5][6] who ruled between 486 and 465 BC,[3] as it is to this monarch that the events described in Esther are thought to fit the most closely.[4][7]

tag: p

text: Assuming that Ahasuerus is indeed Xerxes I, the events described in Esther began around the years 483–482 BC, and concluded in March 473 BC.

text: Classical sources such as Josephus, the Jewish commentary Esther Rabbah and the Christian theologian Bar-Hebraeus,[8] as well as the Greek Septuagint translation of Esther, instead identify Ahasuerus as either Artaxerxes I (reigned 465 to 424 BC) or Artaxerxes II (reigned 404 to 358 BC).[8]

text: On his accession however Artaxerxes II lost Egypt to pharaoh Amyrtaeus, after which it was no longer part of the Persian empire. In his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1) as Artaxerxes III (358–338 BC) who reconquered Egypt.[9]

text: Structure[edit]

text: The Book of Esther consists of an introduction (or exposition) in chapters 1 and 2; the main action (complication and resolution) in chapters 3 to 9:19; and a conclusion in 9:20–10:3.[10]

text: The plot is structured around banquets (mishteh), a word that occurs twenty times in Esther and only 24 times in the rest of the Hebrew bible. This is appropriate given that Esther describes the origin of a Jewish feast, the feast of Purim, but Purim itself is not the subject and no individual feast in the book is commemorated by Purim. The book's theme, rather, is the reversal of destiny through a sudden and unexpected turn of events: the Jews seem destined to be destroyed, but instead are saved. In literary criticism such a reversal is termed "peripety", and while on one level its use in Esther is simply a literary or aesthetic device, on another it is structural to the author's theme, suggesting that the power of God is at work behind human events.[11]

text: Summary[edit]

text: King Ahasuerus, ruler of the Persian Empire, holds a lavish 180-day banquet, initially for his court and dignitaries and afterwards a seven day banquet for all inhabitants of the capital city, Shushan. (Esther 1:1-9.) On the seventh day of the latter banquet, Ahasuerus orders the queen, Vashti, to display her beauty before the guests by coming before them wearing only her crown. (1:10-11.) She refuses, infuriating Ahasuerus, who on the advice of his counselors removes her from her position as an example to other women who might be emboldened to disobey their husbands. (1:12-19.) A decree follows that "that every man should bear rule in his own house." (1:20-22.)

text: Ahasuerus then makes arrangements to choose a new queen from a selection of beautiful young women from throughout the empire. (2:1-4.) Among these women is a Jewish orphan named Esther, who was raised by her cousin or uncle, Mordecai. (2:5-7.) She finds favour in the King's eyes, and is crowned his new queen, but does not reveal her Jewish heritage. (2:8-20.) Shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two courtiers, Bigthan and Teresh, to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecai's service to the King is recorded. (2:21-23.)

text: Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy. (3:1.) Mordecai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into Haman's disfavour, as he refuses to bow down to him. (3:2-5.) Haman discovers that Mordecai refused to bow on account of his Jewishness, and in revenge plots to kill not just Mordecai, but all the Jews in the empire. (3:6.) He obtains Ahasuerus' permission to execute this plan, against payment of ten thousand talents of silver, and casts lots ("purim") to choose the date on which to do this—the thirteenth of the month of Adar. (3:7-12.)  A royal decree is issued throughout the kingdom to slay all Jews on that date. (3:13-15.)

text: When Mordecai discovers the plan, he goes into mourning and implores Esther to intercede with the King. (4:1-5) But she is afraid to present herself to the King unsummoned, an offense punishable by death. (4:6-12.) Instead, she directs Mordecai to have all Jews fast for three days for her, and vows to fast as well.  (4:15-16.)  On the third day she goes to Ahasuerus, who stretches out his sceptre to her to indicate that she is not to be punished. (5:1-2.)  She invites him to a feast in the company of Haman. (5:3-5.) During the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening. (5:6-8.) Meanwhile, Haman is again offended by Mordecai and, at his wife's suggestion, has a gallows built to hang him. (5:9-14.)

text: That night, Ahasuerus cannot sleep, and orders the court records be read to him. (6:1.) He is reminded that Mordecai interceded in the previous plot against his life, and discovers that Mordecai never received any recognition. (6:2-3.) Just then, Haman appears to request the King's permission to hang Mordecai, but before he can make this request, Ahasuerus asks Haman what should be done for the man that the King wishes to honor. (6:4-6.) Assuming that the King is referring to Haman himself, Haman suggests that the man be dressed in the King's royal robes and led around on the King's royal horse, while a herald calls: "See how the King honours a man he wishes to reward!" (6:7-9.) To his surprise and horror, the King instructs Haman to do so to Mordecai. (6:10-11.)

text: Immediately after, Ahasuerus and Haman attend Esther's second banquet. The King promises to grant her any request, and she reveals that she is Jewish and that Haman is planning to exterminate her people, including her. (7:1-6.)  Overcome by rage, Ahasuerus leaves the room; meanwhile Haman stays behind and begs Esther for his life, falling upon her in desperation. (7:7.) The King returns in at this very moment and thinks Haman is assaulting the queen; this makes him angrier and he orders Haman hanged on the very gallows that Haman had prepared for Mordecai. (7:8-10.)

text: Unable to annul a formal royal decree, the King instead adds to it, permitting the Jews to arm and defend themselves on the day chosen for their annihilation. (8:1-14.) On 13 Adar, Haman's ten sons and 500 other men are killed in Shushan. (9:1-12.) Upon hearing of this Esther requests it be repeated the next day, whereupon 300 more men are killed. (9:13-15.) Over 75,000 people are slaughtered by the Jews, who are careful to take no plunder. (9:16-17.)  Mordecai and Esther send letters throughout the provinces instituting an annual commemoration of the Jewish people's redemption, in a holiday called Purim (lots). (9:20-28.) Ahasuerus remains very powerful and continues his reign, with Mordecai assuming a prominent position in his court. (10:1-3.)

text: Authorship and date[edit]

text: The Megillat Esther (Book of Esther) became the last of the 24 books of the Tanakh to be canonized by the Sages of the Great Assembly. According to the Talmud, it was a redaction by the Great Assembly of an original text by Mordecai.[12] It is usually dated to the 4th century BC.[13][14] Shemaryahu Talmon, however, suggests that "the traditional setting of the book in the days of Xerxes I cannot be wide off the mark."[15]

text: The Greek book of Esther, included in the Septuagint, is a retelling of the events of the Hebrew Book of Esther rather than a translation and records additional traditions which do not appear in original Hebrew version, in particular the identification of Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes and details of various letters. It is dated around the late 2nd to early 1st century BC.[16][17] The Coptic and Ethiopic versions of Esther are translations of the Greek rather than the Hebrew Esther.

text: A Latin version of Esther was produced by Jerome for the Vulgate. It translates the Hebrew Esther but interpolates translations of the Greek Esther where the latter provides additional material.

text: Several Aramaic targums of Esther were produced in the Middle Ages of which two survive – the Targum Rishon ("First Targum") and Targum Sheni ("Second Targum")[18][19] dated c. 500–1000 AD.[20] These were not targums ("translations") in the true sense but like the Greek Esther are retellings of events and include additional legends relating to Purim.[18] There is also a 16th-century recension of the Targum Rishon, sometimes counted as Targum Shelishi ("Third Targum").[19]

text: Historicity[edit]

text: The book of Esther falls under the category of Ketuvim, one of three parts of the Jewish canon.[21] According to some sources, it is a historical novella, written to explain the origin of the Jewish holiday of Purim.[21][22]

text: As noted by biblical scholar Michael D. Coogan, the book contains specific details regarding certain subject matter (for example, Persian rule) which are historically inaccurate. For example, Coogan discusses an apparent inaccuracy regarding the age of Esther's cousin (or, according to others, uncle) Mordecai.[21][22] In Esther 2:5–6, either Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish is identified as having been exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BC: "Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah". If this refers to Mordecai, he would have had to live over a century to have witnessed the events described in the Book of Esther.[21] However, the verse may be read as referring not to Mordecai's exile to Babylon, but to his great-grandfather Kish's exile.[23][24][25]

text: In her article "The Book of Esther and Ancient Storytelling", biblical scholar Adele Berlin discusses the reasoning behind scholarly concern about the historicity of Esther. Much of this debate relates to the importance of distinguishing history and fiction within biblical texts, as Berlin argues, in order to gain a more accurate understanding of the history of the Israelite people.[26] Berlin quotes a series of scholars who suggest that the author of Esther did not mean for the book to be considered as a historical writing, but intentionally wrote it to be a historical novella.[27] The genre of novellas under which Esther falls was common during both the Persian and Hellenistic periods to which scholars have dated the book of Esther.[21][26]

text: There are certain elements of the book of Esther that are historically accurate. The story told in the book of Esther takes place during the rule of Ahasuerus, who amongst others has been identified as the 5th-century Persian king Xerxes I (reigned 486–465 BC).[6] The author also displays an accurate knowledge of Persian customs and palaces.[24] However, according to Coogan, considerable historical inaccuracies remain throughout the text, supporting the view that the book of Esther is to be read as a historical novella which tells a story describing historical events but is not necessarily historical fact.[21] Edwin M. Yamauchi has questioned the reliability of other historical sources, such as Herodotus, to which Esther has been compared. Yamauchi wrote, "[Herodotus] was, however, the victim of unreliable informants and was not infallible."[28] The reason for questioning the historical accuracy of such ancient writers as Herodotus is that he is one of the primary sources of knowledge for this time period, and it has been frequently assumed that his account may be more accurate than Esther's account.

text: Historical reading[edit]

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text: Those arguing in favour of a historical reading of Esther most commonly identify Ahasuerus with Xerxes I (ruled 486–465 BC),[6] although in the past it was often assumed that he was Artaxerxes II (ruled 405–359 BC). The Hebrew Ahasuerus (ʔaḥašwērōš) is most likely derived from Persian Xšayārša, the origin of the Greek Xerxes. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Xerxes sought his harem after being defeated in the Greco-Persian Wars. He makes no reference to individual members of the harem except for a domineering Queen consort named Amestris, whose father, Otanes, was one of Xerxes's generals. (In contrast, the Greek historian Ctesias refers to a similar father-in-law/general figure named Onaphas.) Amestris has often been identified with Vashti, but this identification is problematic, as Amestris remained a powerful figure well into the reign of her son, Artaxerxes I, whereas Vashti is portrayed as dismissed in the early part of Xerxes's reign.[citation needed] Alternative attempts have been made to identify her with Esther, although Esther is an orphan whose father was a Jew named Abihail.

text: As for the identity of Mordecai, the similar names Marduka and Marduku have been found as the name of officials in the Persian court in over thirty texts from the period of Xerxes I and his father Darius I, and may refer to up to four individuals, one of which might after all be Mordecai.

text: The "Old Greek" Septuagint version of Esther translates the name Ahasuerus as Artaxerxes,[29] a Greek name derived from the Persian Artaxšaϑra. Josephus too relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks, and the Midrashic text, Esther Rabba also makes the identification. Bar-Hebraeus identified Ahasuerus explicitly as Artaxerxes II; however, the names are not necessarily equivalent: Hebrew has a form of the name Artaxerxes distinct from Ahasuerus, and a direct Greek rendering of Ahasuerus is used by both Josephus and the Septuagint for occurrences of the name outside the Book of Esther. Instead, the Hebrew name Ahasuerus accords with an inscription of the time that notes that Artaxerxes II was named also Aršu, understood as a shortening of Aḫšiyaršu the Babylonian rendering of the Persian Xšayārša (Xerxes), through which the Hebrew ʔaḥašwērōš (Ahasuerus) is derived.[30] Ctesias related that Artaxerxes II was also called Arsicas which is understood as a similar shortening with the Persian suffix -ke that is applied to shortened names. Deinon related that Artaxerxes II was also called Oarses which is also understood to be derived from Xšayārša.[30]

text: Another view attempts to identify him instead with Artaxerxes I (ruled 465–424 BC), whose Babylonian concubine, Kosmartydene, was the mother of his son Darius II (ruled 424–405 BC). Jewish tradition relates that Esther was the mother of a King Darius and so some try to identify Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I and Esther with Kosmartydene.

text: Based on the view that the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit is identical with that of the Book of Esther, some have also identified him as Nebuchadnezzar's ally Cyaxares (ruled 625–585 BC). In certain manuscripts of Tobit, the former is called Achiachar, which, like the Greek Cyaxares, is thought to be derived from Persian Huwaxšaϑra. Depending on the interpretation of Esther 2:5–6, Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish was carried away from Jerusalem with Jeconiah by Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 BC. The view that it was Mordecai would be consistent with the identification of Ahasuerus with Cyaxares. Identifications with other Persian monarchs have also been suggested.

text: Jacob Hoschander has argued that evidence of the historicity of Haman and his father Hamedatha is seen in Omanus and Anadatus mentioned by Strabo as being honoured with Anahita in the city of Zela. Hoschander argues that these were not deities as Strabo supposed but garbled forms of "Haman" and "Hamedatha" who were being worshipped as martyrs. The names are indeed unattested in Persian texts as gods, however the Talmud (Sanhedrin 61b) and Rashi both record a practice of deifying Haman and Josephus speaks of him being worshipped.[30] Attempts have been made to connect both "Omanus" and "Haman" with the Zoroastrian term Vohu Mana; however this denotes the principle of "Good Thoughts" and is not the name of a deity.)

text: In his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1) as Artaxerxes III who reconquered Egypt.[31]

text: Interpretation[edit]

text: Christine Hayes contrasts the Book of Esther with apocalyptic writings, the Book of Daniel in particular: both Esther and Daniel depict an existential threat to the Jewish people, but while Daniel commends the Jews to wait faithfully for God to resolve the crisis, in Esther the crisis is resolved entirely through human action and national solidarity. God, in fact, is not mentioned, Esther is portrayed as assimilated to Persian culture, and Jewish identity in the book is an ethnic category rather than a religious one.[32]

text: This contrasts with traditional Jewish commentaries, such as the commentary of the Vilna Gaon, which states "But in every verse it discusses the great miracle.  However, this miracle was in a hidden form, occurring through apparently natural processes, not like the Exodus from Egypt, which openly revealed the might of God."[33]  This follows the approach of the Talmud,[34] which states that "(The Book of) Esther is referenced in the Torah in the verse 'And I shall surely hide (in Hebrew, 'haster astir,' related to 'Esther') My Face  from them on that day.[35]

text: Additions to Esther[edit]

text: An additional six chapters appear interspersed in Esther in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible. This was noted by Jerome in compiling the Latin Vulgate. Additionally, the Greek text contains many small changes in the meaning of the main text. Jerome recognized the former as additions not present in the Hebrew Text and placed them at the end of his Latin translation. This placement and numbering system is used in Catholic Bible translations based primarily on the Vulgate, such as the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Knox Bible. In contrast, the 1979 revision of the Vulgate, the Nova Vulgata, incorporates the additions to Esther directly into the narrative itself, as do most modern Catholic English translations based on the original Hebrew and Greek (e.g., Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, New American Bible, New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition). The numbering system for the additions differs with each translation. The Nova Vulgata accounts for the additional verses by numbering them as extensions of the verses immediately following or preceding them (e.g., Esther 11:2–12 in the old Vulgate becomes Esther 1:1a–1k in the Nova Vulgata), while the NAB and its successor, the NABRE, assign letters of the alphabet as chapter headings for the additions (e.g., Esther 11:2–12:6 in the Vulgate becomes Esther A:1–17). The RSVCE and the NRSVCE place the additional material into the narrative, but retain the chapter and verse numbering of the old Vulgate.

text: These additions include:[36]

text:
an opening prologue that describes a dream had by Mordecai
the contents of the decree against the Jews
prayers for God's intervention offered by Mordecai and by Esther
an expansion of the scene in which Esther appears before the king, with a mention of God's intervention
a copy of the decree in favor of the Jews
a passage in which Mordecai interprets his dream (from the prologue) in terms of the events that followed
a colophon appended to the end, which reads: In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and his son Ptolemy brought the present letter of Purim, saying that it was genuine and that Lysimachus, son of Ptolemy, of the community of Jerusalem, had translated it.

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text: By the time Esther was written, the foreign power visible on the horizon as a future threat to Judah was the Macedonians of Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persian empire about 150 years after the time of the story of Esther; the Septuagint version noticeably calls Haman a "Bougaion" (βουγαῖον) where the Hebrew text describes him as an Agagite.

text: The canonicity of these Greek additions has been a subject of scholarly disagreement practically since their first appearance in the Septuagint— Martin Luther, being perhaps the most vocal Reformation-era critic of the work, considered even the original Hebrew version to be of very doubtful value.[37] Luther's complaints against the book carried past the point of scholarly critique and may reflect Luther's antisemitism, which is disputed, such as in the biography of Luther by Derek Wilson, which points out that Luther's anger at the Jews was not at their race but at their theology.

text: The Council of Trent, the summation of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation, reconfirmed the entire book, both Hebrew text and Greek additions, as canonical. The Book of Esther is used twice in commonly used sections of the Catholic Lectionary. In both cases, the text used is not only taken from a Greek addition, the readings also are the prayer of Mordecai, and nothing of Esther's own words is ever used. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint version of Esther, as it does for all of the Old Testament. The additions are specifically listed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VI, of the Church of England:[38] "The rest of the Book of Esther".

text: Modern retelling[edit]

text:
There are several paintings depicting Esther, including one by Millais.
The Italian Renaissance poet Lucrezia Tornabuoni chose Esther as one of biblical figures on which she wrote poetry.[39]
In 1689, Jean Baptiste Racine wrote Esther, a tragedy, at the request of Louis XIV's wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon.
In 1718, Handel wrote the oratorio Esther based on Racine's play.
In 1958, a book entitled Behold Your Queen! was written by Gladys Malvern and illustrated by her sister, Corinne Malvern. It was chosen as a selection of the Junior Literary Guild.
The play entitled Esther (1960), written by Welsh dramatist Saunders Lewis, is a retelling of the story in Welsh.
A 1960 movie about the story, Esther and the King, starring Joan Collins.
A 1978 miniseries entitled The Greatest Heroes of the Bible starred Victoria Principal as Esther, Robert Mandan as Xerxes, and Michael Ansara as Haman.
Episode 25 of the 1981 anime series Superbook involves this story.
The 1983 musical entitled Swan Esther was written by J. Edward Oliver and Nick Munns and released as a concept album with Stephanie Lawrence and Denis Quilley. Swan Esther has been performed by the Young Vic, a national tour produced by Bill Kenwright and some amateur groups.
A 1986 Israeli film directed by Amos Gitai entitled Esther.
In 1992, a 30-minute, fully animated video, twelfth in Hanna-Barbera's The Greatest Adventure series, titled Queen Esther features the voices of Helen Slater as Queen Esther, Dean Jones as King Ahasuerus, Werner Klemperer as Haman, and Ron Rifkin as Mordecai.[40][41]
A 1999 TV movie from the Bible Collection that follows the biblical account very closely, Esther, starred Louise Lombard in the title role and F. Murray Abraham as Mordecai.[42]
In 2000, VeggieTales released "Esther... The Girl Who Became Queen".
Chosen: The Lost Diaries of Queen Esther by Ginger Garrett. 2005, NavPress.[importance?]
A 2006 movie about Esther and Ahasuerus, entitled One Night with the King, stars Tiffany Dupont and Luke Goss. It was based on the novel Hadassah: One Night with the King by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen.
Esther is one of the five heroines of the Order of the Eastern Star.
On March 8, 2011, the Maccabeats released a music video called "Purim Song".[43]
The Book of Esther is a 2013 movie starring Jen Lilley as Queen Esther and Joel Smallbone as King Xerxes.[44]
In 2012, a graphic adaptation of the Book of Esther was illustrated by J. T. Waldman and appeared in volume one of The Graphic Canon, edited by Russ Kick and published by Seven Stories Press.