Alfred Hitchcock was born in London, the son of a poultry dealer. He had a strict Catholic upbringing and was educated at the Jesuits' St Ignatius College before going on to London University.In 1919, Hitchcock was hired as a designer of title cards for silent films by the newly opened Famous Players (Paramount) studio in London. Once inside the industry, he progressed rapidly, becoming an assistant director in 1922 and directing his first film, The Pleasure Garden, in 1925. In 1926, he achieved considerable recognition with The Lodger, a film that prefigured many Hitchock themes, such as that of the falsely-accused protagonist forced to prove his innocence.
With Blackmail (1929), described by most critics as the first successful British sound film, and Murder! (1930), Hitchcock made his subsequently familiar connection between sex, violence and criminality. In 1934, The Man Who Knew Too Much brought Hitchcock his first major commercial success, followed by The Thirty-nine Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936) and The Lady Vanishes (1938).
Moving to the United States in 1939, Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, Rebecca (1940), won an Academy Award for best picture. Amazingly, this was to be the director's only Academy Award in his whole career. Many critics consider his next film, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), to be technically and artistically better.
In the 1940s, Hitchcock went more deeply into psychological aspects of the thriller in Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946) and The Paradine Case (1948). In Rope (1948), as in Strangers on a Train (1951), Hitchcock plays with another favourite theme: the "perfect" murder that goes wrong.
The 1950s saw a spate of memorable, big-budget, star-laden films from Hitchcock, including Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1954), a remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955), Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959). The latter sums up all that makes Hitchcock so popular, with its clever photography, sharp male-female relationships, touches of humour, elegant colour and skilfully managed suspense.
In 1960, Hitchcock made Psycho, a film which has entered the collective memory of film goers everywhere with its brilliant editing and shot selection, its graphic violence and its powerful score. He continued to produce psychologically powerful works through the 1960s, including The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), but Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969) were more conventional espionage thrillers.
Hitchcock returned to England to make Frenzy (1972), a resumption of the familiar Hitchcock theme of an innocent man suspected of being a killer. His last film, Family Plot (1976), conjoins psychism and crime in a typical mix. In 1979, Hitchcock received the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute, and in 1980 he was knighted, though an American citizen.
