If the eyes are windows to our souls, then legendary director Alfred Hitchcock had mastered conveying that analogy on film.
A lot of world class directors tend to have signature trademarks that appear in most of their movies.
Take for instance Tarantino’s use of shots from inside a car’s trunk; Wes Anderson’s use of symmetry in his film’s cinematography, and Kubrick’s classic one-point perspective.
For Hitchcock, the eyes were (but not limited to) a common theme.
The video below by Vimeo user ‘kogonada’, as featured on the Criterion Collection Vimeo page gives us a look at just how well the director has captured his subject’s state of mind in each shot, spread across his many films.
The eyes in this instance add such an extra depth to the emotion the actors are trying to portray.
Some examples of effective use of the eyes as featured in the video are those of Anthony Perkins in Hitch’s seminal work Psycho (1960), as well as James Stewart’s in the classic film Vertigo (1958), pictured above.
Of course this is just one trick the master of suspense had up his sleeve, but certainly one of the more powerful ones.
Do you have a favourite Hitchcock film?
Let us know in the comments below.
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