Research - History of Thriller

Thriller films date back to the 1920s and 30s with films such as M (Fritz Lang, 1931) about a serial child killer. During the 1940s, film noir was a very popular genre, with the most notable being Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) and The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941). Orson Welles was a prolific director during this time and his films Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch Of Evil (1958) are now considered classics. During the 1950s and 60s, the thriller genre was dominated by Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense. He was responsible for many classics, with Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) just a few of his masterpieces. His films often featured an ordinary person put into a life-threatening situation. He also used techniques which were considered innovative at the time, including extreme zoom and cross-cutting. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, different variants of thrillers started to emerge. These included crime thrillers such as The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971), and horror thrillers such as Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) and its sequel, Aliens (James Cameron, 1986). In the 1990s, thrillers included action-orientated films such as Speed (Jan De Bont, 1994). Mind-bending stories and plot twists also became common, with The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995), Se7en (David Fincher, 1995) and The Sixth Sense (M Night Shyamalan, 1999). From the history of thriller, I have learnt that the genre has evolved and is still evolving as directors try to find a way to be creative and original. This has inspired me to try and add something creative to my own thriller opening. Note: I used Filmsite for the majority of my information.