[Note - On January 23rd, Joel Gunz presented the lecture "How To Watch Hitchcock" to a group of film, art and philosophy devotees. What follows is more or less the substance of the first half of his presentation; the concluding half will appear in next month's Anvil.]

Movie mogul David O. Selznick was cautiously respectful when he first met Alfred Hitchcock. "He's not a bad guy," the producer said, "although not exactly a man to go camping with." That remark sums up the level of intimacy between these two men, one of whom led a stormy life while creating decent films, the other leading a placid life creating devastating films. You decide which is which. And while you're at it, try to imagine Alfred Hitchcock peeing in the woods.

Since his death in 1980, academic interest in Hitchcock's film work has nearly become a full-blown industry. No fewer than three full length biographies have been written about the director, as well as dozens of academic books, fan books, coffee table books, and "making of" books. There are two scholarly magazines devoted to his films, as well as numerous articles, treatises, college courses, websites (of course), and more. What's all the fuss about? I'm going to try to answer that tonight. But first, some biographical background.

Alfred Hitchcock was not a seriously messed up person.

In 1983, Donald Spoto published a biography of Hitchcock entitled "The Dark Side of Genius", in which he attempted to portray the director as a sexual aggressor, sadist, sociopath, and more. Most of the conclusions Spoto drew have been dismissed as, at best, exaggerations - at worse, mere conjecture. Some of the author's sources have even stepped forward to complain that their statements were taken out of context and even misquoted.

Contrarily, by all verifiable accounts Alfred Hitchcock was a devoted family man who kept bankers' hours, regularly returning home to his wife each night of their some 60 years of marriage; he was a devoted father and a loyal and thoughtful friend. Granted, there were some embarrassing - even ugly - episodes in his life. But he was hardly the satyr or psychopath that some perceive him to have been.

He was also industrious. As shrewd in his business affairs as he was brilliant in his artistry. By age 35 Hitchcock was hailed as Britain's greatest film director, a fact which testifies to his hard work, ambition and social skills as much as it does to his creative genius.

Hitchcock's first films, however, weren't made in England, but in Germany. While in Germany he met the great director F. W. Murnau, watched Fritz Lang work on the set of "Die Nibelungen", and soaked up all that was unique about German cinema: its emphasis on visual storytelling, psychology and the postwar pathos of the Expressionist movement. He carried these influences throughout his career, right into his final film, "Family Plot" (1976).

In England, Hitchcock joined the London Film Society, a hodgepodge of filmmakers, intellectuals, and others who drank deep of such philosophers as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He ran around with Dadaists, surrealists and existentialists and was fascinated by their preoccupation with the destructive potential of art.

What is the Hitchcock style?

Obviously, Hitchcock's films are thrillers. But Hitch didn't necessarily see it that way himself. In 1936 Master of Macabre wrote an article called "Why I make melodramas. In this article he stated that he really wanted to make films about everyday realities of life. However, a film like that would be very boring. Instead, he build his stories around melodramatic screenwriting techniques and cut out all the boring parts of life, building his stories around the drama and heightened emotion that were left carefully intact.

Hitchcock films are also very funny. With access to the best English-language writers around - talents such as Ben Hecht, Thornton Wilder, Raymond Chandler and Dorothy Parker - his films glittered with dialogue that was rich with humor and sophistication. Sometimes he saved the biggest laughs for an audience of one: himself. For instance, Hitch considered "Psycho" to be one big joke.

Another distinctive aspect of Hitchcock's films is their odd dreamlike quality. His characters were thrust into seemingly improbable situations and often complained that they felt as if they were in a dream, or that what was happening seemed unreal. (Apparently, so did his talent: When method actors tried to ask what their motivation was for a scene, he was likely to reply: "Your paycheck".) Alfred Hitchcock, who once claimed that he "practiced absurdity religiously", made films that follow the twisted logic of a fever dream.

"I like to make movies with multiple chases and lots of psychology." -A.H.

A Hitchcock movie is indeed a movie of chases. The director often spoke of a plot device he called the Macguffin. It's the thing that the main characters are after. It could be jewels, documents or anything. It doesn't matter what the thing is - it simply has to exist. In "Notorious" the Macguffin was uranium ore. Ultimately, the Macguffin is a sort of red herring that drives the plot forward, but is almost irrelevant to the dramatic arc of the film. My favorite Macguffin appeared in "North By Northwest". While the spy plot was revealed to Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), an airplane flew overhead, drowning out that part of the dialogue. So, the audience never really found out what the Macguffin was - we simply had to be satisfied to find that there was one.

In contrast, then, a James Bond movie is typically a spy story with a boy-meets-girl dramatic background. Hitchcock movies, on the other hand, are boy-meets-girl dramas with a thriller or spy story background.

Psychotherapist M. Scott Peck once said, "Sanity is the relentless pursuit of reality at all costs". Similarly, Hitchcock once said in an interview that "reality is something that none of us can stand at any time." If these two men are right - and I happen think they are - then it follows that most of us are insane.

I believe that, at their core, this is what Hitchcock's films are about: Reality - the pursuit of it, the ways we avoid it, and the consequences of either choice. Clearly, as Dr. Peck asserts, we'd be crazy to run from reality. So, maybe we're all a little coo-coo. Or as "Psycho's" Norman Bates observed, "we all go a little crazy sometimes." But along with the nightmares, the insanity, and the general pessimism, Hitchcock was ultimately a jokester who felt great compassion for mankind. Not sure about that? Drop by this e-zine next month, when I serve up the conclusion to this article.