A Lesson in Storytelling

Our two-week respite from travel just happened to coincide with Alfred Hitchcock week at the annual Summer Classic Film series in town. We ended up seeing four Hitchcock films in four days—two of which we saw back-to-back in a double feature! Watching several Hitchcock films in such a short amount of time really drove home his storytelling style. As I talked through the things that struck me in each movie, I realized that not only had those four films been a great activity to beat the heat and spend time with my husband, they were also like reading a really good book on storytelling. But I have to confess—this way was much more fun!

Here are some storytelling essentials reinforced while watching To Catch a Thief, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, and Rear Window.

Show, don’t tell. I feel like I’ve had a fairly good grasp of this on the writing front, but if you had asked me about this I would have talked mostly about body language and facial expression, things of that nature. But Hitchcock takes “show, don’t tell” to a higher plane. Not only does he “show” a character’s attitudes or ideas through the body language or facial expressions of the character, he shows us in the pictures he chooses for us to view as well. For instance, in the famous crop duster scene from North by Northwest, his decision to show Cary Grant being dropped in the middle of miles of already harvested, brown fields from a very high vantage point lets us know without words or even a close up on Cary Grant himself exactly how the character feels. The aloneness is stark. The confusion and frustration palpable. The entire scene plays out with only one short interaction with another person in which there is very limited dialogue. And yet we feel such tension in the scene through the showing of the physical world that surrounds him—well before the plane chases him down.

Make dialogue count. There are a lot of quiet moments in Hitchcock films, so when the characters do speak to one another, we listen. We want to catch every word. Yet the dialogue didn’t focus solely on conversations which informed the plot. Often the words were more important for what they revealed of the characters themselves. For instance, we get the idea that Cary Grant’s character in North by Northwest is somewhat of a ladies man as he flirts with Eva Marie Saint’s character—and she flirts with him. And yet because of those more lighthearted interactions, we begin to see how they change in the course of the story. How they come to care for one another, especially as they discover new information about each other.

Humor is important. We categorize Hitchcock as a master of suspense. And that is true. But especially at the beginning of movies he lulls us with some humor. Then later in the story he uses it to diffuse the tension just before it ramps up again. Whether through a comic relief character, such as his daughter’s role in Strangers on a Train (She always had something interesting—and obvious!—to say.) or the banter between the love interests, Hitchcock reveals character and even plot in ways that make us laugh–both in words and pictures. By doing so, the suspenseful plot has the opportunity to catch us by surprise once again.

Create Sympathetic Characters. We simply care about the characters in a Hitchcock movie. We care about John Robie in To Catch a Thief because he’s renounced his past actions and his attempt to live out a better life has been disrupted. We care about Guy Haines in Strangers on a Train because he’s a nice guy who never intended to get caught up in a murder. We care about Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest because he’s a regular guy who has been mistaken for someone else. And we even care about L.B. Jeffries in Rear Window in spite of his complaining and his fear of commitment to his girlfriend because we sympathize with his boredom of being stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg. The heroines of each movie also have their characteristics which play on our sympathies, even if they possess another trait which, taken alone, would have made them unsympathetic.

When we went to the movies last week I had no idea I’d come out thinking so much about the craft of storytelling. It has made me want to chose a few more famous directors and watch several of their films in a row in order to understand their storytelling styles—although that might not happen until next summer’s classic film series!

Do you have any specific screenwriters or directors whose storytelling style you enjoy? If you are a writer, is there a certain film that has taught you about storytelling in a new way?