Watch: 7-Minute Supercut Highlights Alfred Hitchcock's Masterful Close-Ups

Since film is fundamentally a visual medium, it is imperative that every shot in a film tells some sort of story. Whether encompassing the patient visual style of a Yasujiro Ozu picture or the cranked-up intensity of Martin Scorsese, a film’s visual language is an essential component of its durability and success. In this regard, the close-up remains one of the more effective and direct techniques in a director’s arsenal. There is nowhere to hide —the camera is the all-seeing eye and the close-up plunges the viewer right into the dark heart of cinema. By forcing us to focus solely on one person’s face, or one distinct image or prop, the director is drawing an emotional through-line between himself and the audience.  

Alfred Hitchcock understood this concept better than few others. Even Hitch’s minor films feel like miracles of craftsmanship: they are immediate without being messy and to-the-point without being blunt. Like many great directors before and after him, he was...