History of thrillers

History of thrillers:

The most prominent figure involved in the thriller genre was Alfred Hitchcock, he didn’t start of making thriller films and in those days the term thriller hadn’t been used, however the first of his films we consider a thriller is “The lodger” a jack the ripper type story with suspense, this film was released in 1926. The next one he did in 1929 was a film called “Blackmail” this was notable for being his and Britains first sound film. From then on Hitchock focused mainly on producing thrillers and had several hits including “Psycho

 

In the 1950’s Hitchcock still continued to produce adding “Technicolour” to his collection. He produced more 

classic films like “Strangers on a Train” in 1951 which was about two train passangers who both staged a battle of wits and traded murders with each other. Slowly there came about non-Hitchcock thrillers such as “Niagara” in 1953 by Henry Hathaway, this movie starred the famous Marilyn Monroe who played a wife trying to kill her husband.

In the 1960 more and more thrillers where being created, one by Roman Polanski released in 1965 called “Repulsion” was about a young woman who was getting progressively crazy. A violent wave of thrillers came during the 1970-1980 era, notably Hitchcocks “Frenzy”, “Dressed to Kill” and “Blow Out”   

Over the course of film history more creative techniques (e.g vertigo shot by Alfred Hitchcock), cinematography and editing has created the movies of our day, which unlike the movies from 70 years ago spend colossal amounts of money to set up, direct and produce some now a day blockbusters. Thriller films are ever more planned and prepared to give the most thrilling experience possible, as hacking into the psychology of emotions while viewing films, has enabled now a day movies to be more enthralling.

Recently more animation films have been created due to advances in graphic technology, along with insane special effects that we now have the technology for. This has added greatly to the possibilities that thriller films can have now in the present.

David Ziolkowski