"Auteur" Theory

-ALFRED HITCHCOCK THE AUTEUR-

INTRODUCTION
François Truffaut once said: “there are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors”. Sir Alfred Hitchcock is considered to be one of the greatest film directors in the history of cinema; and what is more, he is considered to be what the cinema theoretician André Bazin named as auteur.
This essay is intended to compare two of the mostwell-known and representatives Hitchcock films, Rear Window and Psycho. Actually, more than a mere comparison of both films, what this essay aims is to detect and analyse those cinematographic elements that make Hitchcock a genuine auteur rather than simply a good director.

AUTEUR THEORY
Bazin suggests that ‘auteur theory’ is understood as a way of choosing a personal factor in artistic creation asa standard of reference and then assuming that it continues and even progresses from one film to the next (1). This theory suggests that the best films will bear their creator’s ‘signature’. Hitchcock is one of the filmmakers that better represents this theory. That is to say, in most of his films it is possible to see his stamp or his own personality through some cinematographic techniques thathave become characteristic of his style. Some of these characteristics in Hitchcock’s filmmaking style are the story telling technique, with intelligent plots, witty dialogs or the smattering of mystery and murder. In fact, he is considered the one who revolutionized the thriller gender (1).
Once the basis of this essay have been established and we have been introduced into what Hitchcock meantfor the cinematographic industry and film art, we are going to move into the analysis of some elements that, in both Rear window and Psycho, allow the spectators notice that they are screening a Hitchcock’s film.

THE CONCEPT OF VOYEURISM
Voyeurism, the act of looking at someone when the other is not aware that he or she is being observed, is one of the most representative elements in manyHitchcock’s works. In fact, it is maybe the most important element in Rear Window. All the film takes place in main character’s (Jeff) room, in which he spends all the time observing everything that happens in the neighbouring apartments through a window (not because he wants, but because he broke his leg and has to be at home in a wheelchair).
This has a double meaning, since Hitchcock considers thespectators as voyeurs of the film itself; that is, we spectators are being voyeurs at the same level as the main character. In fact, in one of the interviews that he had with Truffaut in his book on Hitchcock, in which we find an extensive compilation of conversations among them, he declared “Yes, the man was a voyeur. Aren’t we all voyeurs?” referring to Jeff. Then Truffaut followed that “We areall voyeurs, as when we are watching an intimate film. In fact, James Stuart, from his window, is in the same situation as when the spectator goes to the cinema” (2).
As Bazin claimed, “framing is the concealer that reveals only part of the represented reality” (3), following that it is the director’s job to make the spectator’s imagination fill out the other part of reality. He concludes thatHitchcock achieves it by means of a set of elements that are outside of the field of action, which is defined as “the invisible space that extends the visible by means of a set of elements that, although they are not included in the framing, they are allocated imaginatively by the spectator through any mean” (3). Such elements are, for instance, off-screen sound, character’s comes ins and outsfrom the screen or the concealment of objects and characters inside the framing.
As an example of this, by observing the first scene of the film, we see that title credits appear above the image of the closed curtains of a window; as credits move forward, the curtain rolls up little by little, showing slowly to the audience what they are going to find behind them: the building in which the story...