Alfred Hitchcock review "Let 'Em Play God"

Alfred Hitchcock was once known as one of the most popular filmmaker of all time in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He wrote an article about some of the key points into the concept of thriller films. His article is called “Let ‘Em Play God”.

In this article he says that the key ingredient to getting the audience on the edge of their seats is having suspense in the film. He says that when you have suspense in a film you have to let the audience play God. In other words, the audience have to work like the devil for the characters as they know what fate is facing the poor actors/actresses.

Alfred Hitchcock believes that puzzling the audience is not the essence of suspense, and that is why he hasn’t made a film similar to that for 17 years. He deems that one of the necessary ingredients for the formula is a series of plausible situations with people that are real. When characters are unbelievable you never get real suspense, only surprises. He uses his film called Rope to explain his point.

He is sometimes called the mystery maker and he says that it is unnecessary for a director to change his style in order to develop new characters and a different story.