The following is part four of a multi-part series chronicling the trials of an aspiring (and not yet there) film snob. For the full story see parts one, two, and three.

Alfred Hitchcock. If ever there was a man to inspire auteur-oriented thinking, he is it.

More so than any other director, it was Hitchcock who opened my eyes to the kind of impact a single man can have on a film, to the way in which the vision and style of a director can influence a film – and in turn influence scores of filmmakers to follow. “Discovering” Hitchcock for me was like discovering a favorite author when you’re first developing a love of reading, or deciding for the first time that you have a favorite band. It’s a shift of gears, a sudden focus or clarity of sorts. The establishment of a reference point for future viewing. For me, Hitchcock turned into that guy.

Hell, I thought he was a “horror” guy.

But while poking around among the classics, the “must see” films of the last 80 years – and that’s exactly what I was doing at this time – you can’t help but stumble across Hitchcock’s name and his work. That’s exactly what happened. He came up time and again, and so did his films. Vertigo. Rear Window. North By Northwest. Psycho. Classic after classic. So in one of my (then very expensive) weekly trips to Best Buy, I went ahead and bought all four of those titles, plus The Birds for good measure, since they were the titles I knew best and had seen come up most frequently. And … I watched them.

That’s about all it took.

Take Rear Window. Here’s a film that pretty much takes place in one room, in one frickin’ room, all phallic cameras and voyeuristic viewpoints and roving eyes. Here’s the American icon, Jimmy Stewart, capturing the magic while sitting in a wheelchair, and Grace Kelly looking like an angel walking the Earth, sexy as hell without having to reveal a bit of skin. Here’s all these incidental little side characters and side stories woven perfectly into the tapestry of a living, breathing apartment complex. And it’s wrapped up in this perfectly paced thriller that steadily moves forward, scene by scene, revelation by revelation, building to a crescendo that thrills without one damn explosion or crashing car. How could I not love this? It was so effortless and so perfectly realized, I was immediately captured.

And all this time, I simply thought of Hitchcock of “that Psycho guy”.

Then there was North By Northwest, featuring the dashing Carey Grant and a simply lovely Eva Marie Saint. It’s Hitchcock’s action movie, a bit of his take on James Bond, and my first watching was splendid. In many ways it served as the template for films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, with each scene building on the last, one set piece designed to top the last, one memorable sequence after another tied together with a loose story and funny, likable characters. I loved it. And loved it on the next three viewings.

I popped in The Birds shortly thereafter. A movie about a bunch of seagulls pecking at people should be stupid. By all rights, this should not have worked. But Hitchcock was a master manipulator, so instead it worked in spades. The slow, steady, deliberate pacing helped create a subtle tension that explodes into the dire situation presented in the last act, when the main characters are trapped inside a house surrounded by birds that want to kill them. Hitchcock grabs that note of tension and sustains it throughout the entire final act, a marvelous feat that just works, leaving the viewer with an apocalyptic downer of an ending.

Immediately following was Vertigo, considered by some to be one of the greatest films ever made – and with just cause. Hitchcock drags the viewer through a dreamlike jaunt into obsession. He breaks all the rules by revealing the Big Twist halfway through the movie. And breaks the rules again by not allowing the film to fall apart despite the revelation. The kiss in the hotel room is one of the single most dazzling shots ever put to film, bar none. Stewart, Mr. Nice Guy, is pitiable and loathsome, and eminently watchable here. Truly an astounding achievement in film.

After all this, Psycho almost seemed run of the mill.

And so Hitchcock became My Guy, My Favorite, and his techniques became something I would pay close attention to. His use of clever shots or unique cuts. His sense of pacing and timing. The way he let his stories unfold. His unparalleled sense of establishing and sustaining suspense. Watching his films (I’ve seen about 20 so far, and own another 10 or so I have yet to watch) became like taking a course in film technique, a step-by-step lesson in how to make even weak material work. He had stretches in his career where he churned out one masterpiece after another, with at least two 10-year spans that are as good as (and often far better) the entire careers of most other directors. There is just a wealth of film goodness to explore in his career, from the silent era into the early 70s.

Even better, and further serving to enhance my interest in the world of film, was Hitch’s personal story. His was a rich and interesting life with twisted habits and dark secrets. He crossed paths with some of the biggest names in the history of film and his life resulted in some of the most interesting stories out there. Not only do his films make for great watching, his biography makes for great reading.

So here was a big step. An almost essential step when getting involved in some new passion. A “favorite” had been established, someone I could confidently point to and say, “I love his work.” I was getting there. I loved film and I now even had a “favorite”.

But I still didn’t quite feel there. Not yet. Something was missing, and I knew what it was. Text. After all, what sort of exploration of film would it be without a journey into the world of subtitles and languages I can’t frickin’ understand?

Foreign films, meet Eric San Juan. Eric San Juan, meet foreign films.

Watch next week for Volume 5 of Diary of an Aspiring Film Snob.