Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous Classic Starring the Princess of Monaco Inspired David Fincher’s Film About a Hitman on the Run
English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock undeniably left behind a huge mark on cinema as even more than four decades after his demise, he continues to be one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. Dubbed the ‘Master of Suspense’, he was as famous as the actors who appeared in his films.
Alfred Hitchcock is known to have influenced numerous legendary filmmakers over the years. One of them happens to be The Social Network director David Fincher. Fincher’s latest project The Killer seems to have been inspired by one of Hitchcock’s best films.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window Inspired David Fincher’s The Killer
Anyone who has observed Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher’s style of filmmaking can tell that it is not much different as both of these directors excel at making psychological thrillers. So, it goes without saying that the Vertigo director has heavily influenced David Fincher‘s way of working.
Fincher’s most recent project is the Netflix thriller The Killer, an adaptation of the French graphic novel of the same name. The movie, which premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and was released on Netflix on November 10, is from The Killer’s point of view as he tries to run away after he fails to kill his first target.
The scenes in which the movie’s titular character (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) marked out his first target are a throwback to Hitchcock’s 1954 psychological thriller Rear Window. Ironically, this movie was screened at the 1954 Venice Film Festival and follows a wheelchair-confined L. B. Jefferies who is suspicious that one of his neighbors is a murderer.
Rear Window stars James Stewart as professional photographer L. B. Jefferies and the Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly as Jefferies’ girlfriend Lisa Carol Fremont. It is one of David Fincher’s favorite movies of Hitchcock. Other movies that have influenced The Killer are French New Wave classic Le Samouraï and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.
Alfred Hitchcock Largely Influenced David Fincher’s Journey to Becoming a Filmmaker
Alfred Hitchcock never shied away from interviews and any other such thing that would put him in the limelight. This allowed one of the founders of the French New Wave iconic French filmmaker François Truffaut to interview his fellow director Hitchcock for eight days at the latter’s offices at Universal Studios. These interviews were recorded for Truffaut’s 1966 book Hitchcock/Truffaut.
Decades later, American director Kent Jones made a documentary about the book in 2015. This documentary also included interviews with some of the best filmmakers in the industry right now. David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, and Arnaud Desplechin were among these filmmakers.
It was then that David Fincher revealed that he was just seven years old when he came across the book Hitchcock/Truffaut on his father’s desk (via Los Angeles Times). As curiosity got the best of him, he started reading the book as he said that it was “part of my cinematic homeschooling. I had never thought about kind of the matrix of film language before.”
Despite his admiration for Hitchcock, Fincher said that he was not a fan of the 1958 romantic psychological thriller Vertigo, which is considered one of the greatest movies to have been ever made. However, the Zodiac director has never held back his love for Hitchcock’s movies.
