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| Sir Alfred Hitchcock |
Today, we have another Halloween-themed post, "The Architecture of Thrill: How Hitchcock Inspires Spatial Effects," by art theorist and historian Alfons Puigarnu and architect Ingacio Infiesta; translated by Matthew Valleta for the website arch daily.com. The authors are professors at the School of Architecture at UIC Barcelona, Spain. They have been teaching an Ethics class, for the past several years that has analyzed the movies of The Master of Suspense Sir Alfred Hitchcock. The goal of the class is a deep analysis of Sir Hitchcock's movies in order to aid the students's of architectural concepts that incorporate suspense Their approach: "space is thought of stenography, and visual strategy is analyzed in relation to the script and soundtrack with the intention of creating a deliberate atmosphere of suspense." The camera lens, like the architect's writing tool, creates outlines. In this way, the visuals take precedence over the dialogue. (Truffaut, 1974, 20 and 59) The professors have divided the course into two complementary sections: Prof. Puigarnu lectures on design strategies through formal analysis of the elements used by the late director. Prof. Infiesta teaches the portion of the course based on graphic represntations that encompass the concept of suspense in architecture.
Architecture and Suspense: An Added Emotion for Designing
One of the most important elements that cinema contributes to architecture is "Leaving the space in suspense." This has the ability to contribute the image of "intensely emotional spaces." Sir Hitchcock designs architectural in a similar manner as a model, where the emotional content of a movie and the choreography of the movements are presented. (Jacobs, 2013, 10-15). Suspense is a potent tool for keeping the audience's attention. (Truffaut, 66) Like any good architectural design, Sir Hitchcock's movies have to develop a single concept that fully manifests itself dramatic climax of the film. (Ibid)
Sir Alfred Hitchcock once told French director Francois Truffaut, don't confuse suspense with surprise. Emotions are the crucial ingredients for creating suspense. Indeed they are and part of creating that emotion is understanding the spatial layout, knowing that at the terminus is the surprise. In other words, for suspense to be geniune, there has to be a component that makes the whole action tense, "...that makes the ending of this experience over this space unexpected. Suspense provides he perfect atmosphere for surprise."
1. PSYCHO: Blinds as an Element of Suspense
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| Norman Bates peeking at Marion Crane oneplusonemagazine.com |
Here, the blinds are the mediating space. "A place of suspense, they're ways situated in the border between two halves: interior-exterior." Like vivisected animals, the blinds are living skin. The authors are keen to note that the Bernard Hermann soundtrack, which only uses string instrument, allows to think that we are creating suspense with sound.
2. THE ROPE; Design as Crime
The professors write, "Crime as the purest form of art." This rather ominous quote is taken from the 1948 Hitchcock movie The Rope when the characters Brandon and Philip lay out plans to murder another character named David. The methodical planning and preparation of the deed allow us to map out the architectural spaces with meticulousness. The professors add, "Crime has the ability to speed up spaces, dramatically looking for an ending."
The Rope was the first Hitchcock movie filmed in Technicolor-the "chromatic emulsion at first accentuates the pastel tones and absorbs cold colors, along the same lines as the nuances sought by the director." The story unfolds in real time. The primary strategy for developing the action was to edited it as if it were a single take. The professor write, "The unity between time and space is absolute. Everything that happens in space corresponds to time, as we can see in the change in light of the diorama that shows New York City." The professor make the analogy of the Greek tragedy, Aristotle's Poetics: "anticlimax-beginning of action-climax."
3. VERTIGO; Design as Transition
The Moebius strip is a leitmotif of the 1958 classic Vertigo. This recurring theme shows up at different points in the movie: a bouquet of flowers, a ring of sequoia trees, a full circle dolly zoom on kiss, a tight shot of Kim Novak and Carlota Valdes's buns. The Moebius strip symbolizes the infinite loop, mostly, the ability to move across the same surface without change of planes. This is how Kim Novak's character seamlessly moves from the dual role of Madeleine and Judy Barton.
The professors cite one of Vertigo's best known scenes, which takes place in the bell tower of Mission San Juan Bautista. In this scene, James Stewart's character, Scottie, follows Kim Novak's Madeleine into the bell tower. Here, the director plays with the zoom lens, which the authors write is, "...a metaphor between the world of the living and the world of the dead." In architectural terms, types of transition are a result of "...previously fixed objects and the practical necessity that the physical construction of the building imposes." One example, is the square-shaped walkway of the transept floor in a church or the polygon circle that comes out of a dome. Here, the fascination is of space transitioning from one form to another.
4. REAR WINDOW: Design as a Look
James Stewart is a voyeur of more benign sort in the 1954 gem Rear Window. In Rear Window, the tension is the result of watching and the watched-across the courtyard of an apartment. Here, Sir Hitchcock places emphasis on the optical objects through the theme of looking. The professors write, "Architecture as just a look may reach its greatest expression in a set of sections. It is precisely in the section what is happening with a design is discovered, just like how they discover the murderer in the Rear Window."
Sir Alfred Hitchcock was very best editor of subjectivity. The professors continue, "The ability to influence sight in future spaces, manipulating users without being seen, is also had by the architect when he is seen submerged in the process of project or pre-project design." Rear Window affords a metropolitan view. Further, it is in that urban space that crime can be thought of as a work of art. In typical city life, anything is possible. A section through a metropolitan environment also demonstrates the contradiction between "the impossibility of being alone and the obligatory loneliness of anonymity."
5. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN: Design as Editing
Strangers On A Train (1950), one of the few Hitchcock films that belongs squarely in the film noir genre. The movie is shot in stunning black and white, chiaroscuro that could make a Baroque master envious from the way light and shadow are contrasted. Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name, the story, unlike The Rope, is composed of fragments. The editor's task is uniting the different takes without relinquishing the whole composition.
The professors ask, "Is it possible to obtain suspense just through editing?" The answer is yes and the Master of Suspense shows how in the very first scene of the movie. The camera is placed at ground level to show us the opposing movements of two men boarding the train. It is only when the feet accidentally cross each other does the camera pan vertically, finally revealing the actors's faces. The professors cite the architecture of Enric Miralles as an example of work based on fragments, on notes, lines that appear to weave in and out uniting the work. They continue, "The fragment always gives the possibility of exploring the metric either of light or of its own material. the project is understood to be a process, even an unfinished one."
6. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (II): Design as a Magnetic Field
There is another motif in Strangers On A Train is just as important: the magnetism of architecture and its correlation to suspense. The movie was filmed in Washington D.C. a city of great monuments, plazas, and hubs. The professors write, "It's revealing to observe how in the movie the confrontation between the two men (Guy and Bruno), is always obstructed by architecture." The onus is on the monument to be the staging site and magnetic force that abets the suspense of the whole scene. Here the architecture becomes a metaphor of Bruno's domination over guy. Another leitmotif of Hitchcock movies is the curious relationship between the central and the periphery. Specifically, the connection between large and small scale, "...where small objects take on different connotations after being immersed in a metropolitan context."
7. SHADOW OF A DOUBT; Design as Doubt
Design as doubt. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) defined psychological thrillers. The plot is primitive, a man running from the police, flees to a rural city-Santa Rosa, California-settling into a naive and unsophisticated place. The man, Uncle Charlie, the said fugitive whose guilt is questioned in the murder of a "happy widow." Uncle Charlie is not the only suspect, which adds more doubt. Doubt is physically in the movie via the staircase, becomes one of the most meaningful parts of the movie. "You can leave from whichever stairway, so any one of the suspects could be guilty."
The main staircase in Shadow of a Doubt highlights the violent interior space of the house. It implies the difficulties of being in a dilemma: doubting two options. Dilemma in architecture always illicit uncertainty, a possible design methodology. This is a reasonable thought because modern architecture, in order to unchain itself from the load-bearing wall, puts itself in a state of continuous doubt.
2. THE ROPE; Design as Crime
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| Scene from The Rope (1948) nothingiswrittenfilm.blogspot.com |
The Rope was the first Hitchcock movie filmed in Technicolor-the "chromatic emulsion at first accentuates the pastel tones and absorbs cold colors, along the same lines as the nuances sought by the director." The story unfolds in real time. The primary strategy for developing the action was to edited it as if it were a single take. The professor write, "The unity between time and space is absolute. Everything that happens in space corresponds to time, as we can see in the change in light of the diorama that shows New York City." The professor make the analogy of the Greek tragedy, Aristotle's Poetics: "anticlimax-beginning of action-climax."
3. VERTIGO; Design as Transition
 |
| Scene from Vertigo (1958) myfilmviews.com |
The professors cite one of Vertigo's best known scenes, which takes place in the bell tower of Mission San Juan Bautista. In this scene, James Stewart's character, Scottie, follows Kim Novak's Madeleine into the bell tower. Here, the director plays with the zoom lens, which the authors write is, "...a metaphor between the world of the living and the world of the dead." In architectural terms, types of transition are a result of "...previously fixed objects and the practical necessity that the physical construction of the building imposes." One example, is the square-shaped walkway of the transept floor in a church or the polygon circle that comes out of a dome. Here, the fascination is of space transitioning from one form to another.
4. REAR WINDOW: Design as a Look
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| James Stewart in Rear Window (1954) the dissolve.com |
Sir Alfred Hitchcock was very best editor of subjectivity. The professors continue, "The ability to influence sight in future spaces, manipulating users without being seen, is also had by the architect when he is seen submerged in the process of project or pre-project design." Rear Window affords a metropolitan view. Further, it is in that urban space that crime can be thought of as a work of art. In typical city life, anything is possible. A section through a metropolitan environment also demonstrates the contradiction between "the impossibility of being alone and the obligatory loneliness of anonymity."
5. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN: Design as Editing
 |
| Scene from Strangers on a Train (1950) Image courtesy of Ethics Course, School of Architecture (UIC) arch daily.com |
Strangers On A Train (1950), one of the few Hitchcock films that belongs squarely in the film noir genre. The movie is shot in stunning black and white, chiaroscuro that could make a Baroque master envious from the way light and shadow are contrasted. Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name, the story, unlike The Rope, is composed of fragments. The editor's task is uniting the different takes without relinquishing the whole composition.
The professors ask, "Is it possible to obtain suspense just through editing?" The answer is yes and the Master of Suspense shows how in the very first scene of the movie. The camera is placed at ground level to show us the opposing movements of two men boarding the train. It is only when the feet accidentally cross each other does the camera pan vertically, finally revealing the actors's faces. The professors cite the architecture of Enric Miralles as an example of work based on fragments, on notes, lines that appear to weave in and out uniting the work. They continue, "The fragment always gives the possibility of exploring the metric either of light or of its own material. the project is understood to be a process, even an unfinished one."
6. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (II): Design as a Magnetic Field
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7. SHADOW OF A DOUBT; Design as Doubt
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| Scene from Shadow of a Doubt (1943) commentarytrack.com |
The main staircase in Shadow of a Doubt highlights the violent interior space of the house. It implies the difficulties of being in a dilemma: doubting two options. Dilemma in architecture always illicit uncertainty, a possible design methodology. This is a reasonable thought because modern architecture, in order to unchain itself from the load-bearing wall, puts itself in a state of continuous doubt.
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