Alfred Hitchcock:

Psycho influences (isabelle smith)

Childhood:

  

Alfred Hitchcock was born in London on the 13th of August 1899.He had a very strict upbringing from his parents who were Catholic. As a child he felt sheltered because of his upbringing and he was also quite lonely, which was mainly due to his struggle with obesity as a boy.

Some of this strict upbringing and punishments given by his parents where somewhat of an inspiration to some scenes in Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’. One punishment in particular which was featured in the film was that as a child his mother would force him to stand at the foot of her bed for several hours as a punishment, these punishments which were seen as unjust by Hitchcock, had a huge impact on him as a person  and this idea of unfair punishment was often reflected in his films in later life.

In his younger years when he got his first job draftsman and advertising designer (before this he had studied engineering at St. Ignatius College in London) he started writing and submitting articles for the in-house publication. Even in these early short articles Hitchcock explored themes of false accusation which he felt he had experienced many a time in childhood.