Research Of Focalizing Narration Of Hitchcock's Films

Alfred Hitchcock has been a director for fifty-five years,during which he produced a total of 59 films.His films went from silent to vocal and from black and white to colorful,having caused great impact in the history of film.Hitchcock is reputed as “master of suspense”.The creation of suspense involves a lot of factors.Among all of them,the way of creating suspense through focalization is particularly delicate and effective in the film art of Hitchcock.This paper has made a detailed exploration of the narrative features of Hitchcock's films and causes of the suspense with three chapters from two perspectives: visual-audio focalization and cognitive focalization.According to researches,Hitchcock's films have distinctive features with respect to visual focalization.In terms of original internal visual focalization,Hitchcock used to experimentally apply ways like image distortion,foreground setting and featuring the camera with subjectivity to connect image content with vision of characters in the films.In this way,the audience can recognize which character an image belongs through without turning to the context.In terms of secondary vision,Hitchcock used common three camera views and intra-camera montage skills to connect the visual relation between characters and the image.Hitchcock's films are worth learning regarding the application of auditory focalization.When using zero auditory focalization,Hitchcock used audio,music and blank of sound—silence to create the effect of suspense.When Hitchcock hoped certain sound in the films is connected to certain character,he always used narrate by using the original auditory focalization and secondary auditory focalization of auditory focalization.To sum up,distortion of sound and sound-picture montage are technical means that are often applied by Hitchcock.Hitchcock's skillful application of cognitive focalization is an in-depth code of suspense in his films.By making use of different cognitive focalization means,Hitchcock has created different kinds of suspense.The use of cognitive focalization can give rise to inferential suspense which is characterized by the use of imbalanced information and unreliability of the attained information for creating suspense.When using audience cognitive focalization to produce suspense,Hitchcock put forward that intellectual doubts must be set up and the passion of the audience must be arose.When using external cognitive focalization,however,Hitchcock always created suspense in the films by making the audience generate cognitive illusions or suppressing the audience's cognition.All in all,Hitchcock is good at using various focalizing and narrative skills to create all kinds of suspense.Studying the issue of film narration from perspective of focalization is conducive to revealing the secret and style of Hitchcock's suspense in an more accurate and real way.