This ties closely with Hitchcock's belief that "dialogue means nothing" in and of itself. He explains, "People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another, a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs." Thus the focus of a scene within his movies never focuses on what actors say, but rather on what they are doing. Unlike a painter, or a writer, "we don't have pages to fill, or pages from a typewriter to fill, we have a rectangular screen in a movie house." The reduction of dialogue and focus on action, however minute is a central technique utilized by Hitchcock to build suspense in many of his most memorable movies.

One of Hitchcock's most important techniques was his mastery of the point-of-view editing. Point-of-view sequences can allow Hitchcock to convey shades of meaning that otherwise would have been completely...
[ View Full Essay]