Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was known as the 'Master of Suspense' and 25 years after his death, he arguably remains the most imitated filmmaker of all time. He told his stories through intelligent plots, witty dialogue and a healthy dose of mystery and murder. In doing so, he inspired a new generation of filmmakers and revolutionised the thriller genre. He remains famous for a string of high-brow thrillers including Psycho, The Lady Vanishes, Suspicion, Notorious, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window and North by Northwest spanning a career of over forty years in film. Paul Nash takes a look at why this unassuming son of an east end greengrocer still remains one of our greatest filmmakers.

Hitchcock once summed up, in characteristically underplayed fashion, the traits his films have in common: "Murder, mayhem, violence, sex, beautifully, pictorially expressed, lovely costumes, perfect cutting and err " a joke or two".

However many critics and film lovers alike see his films as much more - as the work of a great auteur, especially after Truffaut and his fellow Cahiers du Cinema critics placed Hitchcock in a privileged and central position in their revaluation of American cinema in the 1950s. However, they pointedly did not extend the same courtesy to his British films.

The critic Claude Chabrol wrote about what he called a "Hitchcockian Universe", which the director had made public via his films and interviews. But, what kind of Universe was this? His films all seem to have a unifying concern of uncovering the dark underworld of human nature as represented by the "Chaos-world" that is hidden under civilised society. This glamorous Hitchcockian world undercut by fear, guilt and repression is more than evident in his American thrillers such as North by Northwest, Notorious, and more obviously in the more psychological films like Marnie and Psycho.

North by Northwest sees an ordinary businessman (Cary Grant playing one of Hitchcock's many wronged men) drawn into a deadly world of espionage because he is mistaken for an American spy (who in fact doesn't exist). The director's mistrust for the justice system is centre stage, for the protagonist is forced to find out the truth and clear his own name. Perhaps unsurprisingly Hitchcock himself was indeed afraid of the police: "Oh, I'm afraid of policemen, the wrong side of the law, trouble, Authority descending on me, putting its heavy hand on my shoulder, and making my stomach turn over with fear".

In Notorious, Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) must infiltrate the secretive world of wealthy Nazi conspirators. Sex, as ever, is important; Alicia has a chequered past, and is persuaded to pretend to be in love (and therefore have sex) with Sebastian, her new "playmate". Marnie and Psycho's "chaos-world" is not espionage set, but is of the mind. Marnie has unexplained red flashes in her vision whenever danger looms, which are later explained by a violent childhood trauma, that also leads to her sexual repression. Psycho is infamous for Norman Bates' split personality dominated by his dead mother, so much so that he commits horrific murders in her guise. These four films are just a small cross-section of Hitchcock's work, but represent the "cruelty, loneliness, paranoia... dark feelings" throughout it. Repeated themes and motifs stem from this 'world' Hitchcock uncovers. For instance throughout these films and especially the British thriller sextet, the themes of deceit, romance, coincidence, fate, running, sexual politics and ambiguity are clearly present.

Hitchcock's foreign espionage thrillers are always non-specific; we do not know whom the enemy spies work for or exactly what information they are willing to lose their lives for (North by Northwest, Notorious). To Hitchcock, content simply did not matter, what did, however, was entertainment through suspense. This was his art. He is a master of suspense. Even from his early British films he knew exactly what he would do before shooting: "Everything is decided on paper. I do not improvise while the picture is being made� if you don't make your picture on paper ahead of time with all the desired effects, if you cannot visualise or hear, then this will be like a musician composing with a full orchestra in front of him".

Hitchcock's British works must be understood in their historical context. American cinema dominated the inter-war period in the UK, therefore the classical narrative system at work in these films naturally exercised a major influence on stylistic evolution of British films, noticeably Hitchcock. So, in terms of narrative structure (cause and effect, classic narrative structure) and certain aspects of style, there was always going to be a connection between his British films and American cinema.

The Lodger, his first sole directorial credit, has many of the elements that would later become key Hitchcockian motifs. The director makes his first cameo appearance, as part of the crowd baying for the lodger's blood near the end of the film. These recurring cameos would become a visually obvious auteur reference, especially in his American films. Motifs heavily associated with Hitchcock's authorial pedigree also make an early appearance, introducing the audience to the first of Hitchcock's blonde heroines (the killer targets only blonde women), and the first wronged man on the run (a angry mob nearly kills the innocent lodger). The high angle shots of the staircase in The Lodger add to a suspenseful atmosphere of foreboding, and are a heavily repeated motif throughout his cinematic canon (the Newton 's house in Shadow of a Doubt, and the Bates' house in Psycho) . The chaos-world is in full effect; London has an unreal, sinister, and otherworldly feel where the public clamber animalistically in a desperate rush to get the latest news on the murders. The imagery of the fog on the climatic night adds to the feel of danger and mystery, and eludes to the London of Jack the Ripper, and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (that Hitchcock latter returned to in Frenzy). Even at this early stage of his fledging career Hitchcock derived a great deal of tension by a stunning trick shot that shows the lodger pacing up and down on a see-through floor from the point of view of a family downstairs fearfully looking up.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an 'innocent man on the run' film and a foreign espionage thriller where little is know about the actual espionage (as in Saboteur, Topaz, Torn Curtain). Exactly what the thirty-nine steps are is still unclear at the film's close. Hitchcock would later heavily borrow from this film in Young and Innocent, Sabotage and North by Northwest. The ice maiden that would later become pre-valiant in his American canon is played by Madeleine Carroll, who continually makes it clear to our hero Hannay (Robert Donat) she believes him guilty and a worthless individual. Much to his amusement.

Hitchcock once said: "The element of suspense is giving an audience information. Now, you and I are sitting here, suddenly a bomb goes off. Up we go blown to smithereens. What have the audience had watching this scene? Five or ten seconds of shock. Now, we do the scene over again, but we tell the audience there's a bomb underneath the table and its going to go off in five minutes. Now this innocuous conversation about football becomes very potent. They say 'don't talk about football, there's a bomb under there!' Then their anxieties will be as long as that clock ticks away. But, the bomb must never go off."

Therefore he always viewed his allowing the bomb to explode on a bus in Sabotage as "bad technique". This lapse could be taken as a sign he had yet to master his craft. However, the sequence leading up to the explosion is composed with supreme skill, with continuous reminders that "the birds will sing at one-forty-five", and suspenseful montage between images of Stevie, the clock and the bomb itself.

The Young and the Innocent has probably the strongest Macguffin of them all " Robert Tisdall's coat belt is the sole driving force behind the plot! It also features one of Hitchcock's greatest shots, the drummer man crane shot near the close of the film. It glides through the lobby of the hotel and into the dance hall area, before slowly moving forward to a close up of the drummer man's eyes twitching. It is a flash of brilliance that adds a real flare and tension to the proceedings, a skill that he would develop for the twenty-minute take in Rope.

The Lady Vanishes won the New York film critics Award at the time of its release. It is easy to see why " Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood's acting, chemistry and comic timing give their banter a refreshingly natural and playful feel. The two leads become embroiled in a conspiracy, where the system (here symbolised by the seemingly kindly Dr. Hartz) tries to crush the little people (or the wronged man in many Hitchcock thrillers). Circumstance wrings maximum tension and story out of the old lady's disappearance. All the people on the train have their own reasons for concealing the truth; the adulterous couple do not want to get involved in case a scandal would cause their spouses to divorce them; and the hilariously stereotypical 1930s English cricket fans just want to get to Manchester to watch the Test Match.

Hitchcock is often thought of as an American director (he himself said this in late interviews). Critics have been largely guilty of taking this statement too literally. He almost certainly was not denying his British origins, but in fact asserting that he had the vision of an American director, unlike many (or any) of his British contemporaries. He is not simply an American director, and this is evident to any critic who would only choose to study the facts rather than continue prejudices against British Cinema. For instance, he made twenty-one British films in his career. Quite apart from this tally, Britishness exudes out of many of his US movies. Of his American films six are set in the UK: Rebecca, Suspicion, The Paradine Case, Stage Fright, Dial M for Murder, and Frenzy. Under Capricorn is set in Australia, but under British rule. Four of the director's films are based on British plays/novels, but the location has been changed to the US to make for more American friendly films: Rope, The Birds, The Trouble with Harry, and Marnie. The latter film, despite change of locale, still has a very British feel with old family homes, afternoon tea and even fox hunting.

Truffaut talks of the "icy sexuality" of Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's American films. The fact he does not or cannot make the significant realisation that this very much English stereotype stems from Hitchcock's inherent Britishness says a great deal. The critic's prejudices against British cinema (and that of many other critics, both foreign and British) have made him ignore the great importance of Hitchcock's pre-American works. That this is where his interests, styles, thematics and so on were formed. And it is these very traits that are the basis of the auteur theory surrounding his later American works.