How Does Hitchcock Use Suspense

In Hitchcock’s films there were recurring themes like, suspense, the ordinary person and a staircase, that dominated in most of his films. These themes were able to better the overall storytelling of his films, because they added more depth to his films. One of the first themes that Hitchcock uses is one that he is known for and that is suspense. In his films Hitchcock uses suspense instead of just surprising the audience is because surprise will just assault the audience with some frightening thing with have that build up to it; but with suspense it is different. With suspense you are able to tell or show the audience things that the characters in the film do not know and then builds tension around when the characters learn the truth. For Rebecca, there was a lot …show more content…
The biggest thing that did it was the night of the party when Mr. De Winter was in the cottage acting all suspicious, having him pace around and stammer really added to the whole truth coming out. Other suspenseful moment would be the moment when they were going to find out why would Rebecca kill herself. Mr. De Winter and Jack Favell thought because she was pregnant. Hitchcock portrayed this by having the scene of Jack Favell accusing Mr. De Winter that he killed Rebecca because she was pregnant and saying that he knows that she went to the doctor. The mood heightens when they all go to the doctor that Rebecca went to that night and mood heightens even more when the doctor gets out his log book. This was able to put the audience on edge because everybody was thinking “was Rebecca really pregnant?”, but the answer ended up being that she had cancer which was even more of an explosion then her being pregnant. Another theme that Hitchcock used often was having an ordinary person in an extraordinary circumstance. Hitchcock like using this because it let the audience better relate to the