![]() Long before his name became synonymous with his droll brand of macabre, Hitchcock put his own face on his product, introducing his films in coming attractions, making cameo appearances which his fans learned to anticipate (popping up in a weight-loss ad in Lifeboat, walking a pair of dogs in The Birds), lending his name to pulp magazines, book anthologies, and board games, and becoming the only legendary director to make himself at home in America’s living room as the host of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where his distinguished-penguin silhouette became the most famous profile in television. Popularity meant more to him than it did to the field-commander directors, who were content to play God. A pudgy man who seemed to hold on to his baby fat for protective padding, Hitchcock elevated the voyeurism implicit in all filmmaking into an explicit stare and aesthetic statement. In this camp, which encompasses practical jokers from Luis Buñuel to John Waters, no one served death as a cold dish with more Jeevesian aplomb than Alfred Hitchcock. But there is another traditional role, less grand but equally enduring, of the director as nimble chef, whipping up treats which contain nasty surprises. De Mille staging biblical spectacles with throngs of costumed extras, David Lean bracing himself against the raging winds ( Ryan’s Daughter) and desert sands ( Lawrence of Arabia), Sam Peckinpah detonating a horse-crowded bridge in The Wild Bunch-of such stuff fearless leaders are made. John Ford re-creating cavalry movements in Utah’s Monument Valley, Leni Riefenstahl supervising Nazi parades, Cecil B. Griffith into the sound era-the film director has doubled as field commander. From the birth of cinema-from the silent epics of Sergei Eisenstein, Abel Gance, and D. Movie directors are supposed to be larger than life, Caesars of all they survey.
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