Noah Packard

3/25/28
Informative Speech Outline

Specific goal: My audience will understand why Alfred Hitchcock is an important figure in the
history of filmmaking

Narrowed topic:
A. Strategy: I’ll teach my by description and explanation
B. Narrow Focus: My focus is already narrow.

Ethos:
A. Primary Ethos: I am a film student, so I understand a lot of these principle and why they
were used/can be helpful
B. Secondary Ethos: I will cite a variety of authoritative references, as seen on my
annotated bibliography, concerning Hitchcock’s history and filmmaking

Audience Knowledge Level: Hard to say for certain, but likely varies a lot between people.
Virtually everyone knows who Alfred Hitchcock is, but beyond his name and a couple of his
films, I will assume most people don’t know that much about him.
I will also assume that they don’t know that much about some of the aspects of directing
and filmmaking that I will talk about, so I will define a lot of relative stuff in my speech.

Adaptation to Audience Knowledge: I will adapt to my audience by assuming they don’t know
very much about filmmaking terms, so I will define important terms that they may not know. I will
also give a brief biography of Alfred Hitchcock to explain who he was and establish his
significance.

Pattern of Organization: I will use a topical pattern of organization, since nothing else really
works for this speech.

Outline:

Intro
I. Hook: “Make the audience suffer as much as possible”. This quote comes from Alfred
Hitchcock, a household name when discussing film directors. Throughout his life he
directed nearly 60 films and today is revered as one of the single most important figures
in the history of modern filmmaking.
II. Thesis I’m here to show you why Hitchcock is such an important figure in filmmaking,
and how the United States Motion Picture Production Code influenced his work
III. Preview:
A. Early career in England
B. The US Production Code and Rebecca
 C. Notorious
D. Psycho
E. Post-Code Work

Body
I. Early life
A. Hitchcock began his career in England, where he was born. He started directing
films during the silent era, which can be seen as an influence in his later work
after sound became standard.
1. He worked for a studio called the Players-Lasky corporation, assisting on
the production of a variety of silent films
2. He was asked to direct his own film in 1925, and traveled to Germany to
direct The Pleasure Garden, thus beginning his career as a director.
(Gottlieb 2014)
3. According to the Salem Press biographical Encyclopedia, the first nine
silent films he directed in England provided the beginnings for his unique
style of storytelling, which blended unique narrative twists with dark and
grim subject matter, murder usually ebing a very common element.
4. According to Hitchcock himself, The Lodger was the first “true” “Hitchcock
film”, since it included many of the thematic elements that became staples
of his later work (Maurer 2015)
II. Moving to America - The Production Code
A. He left England in 1940 and moved to Hollywood, California, to pursue a larger
career in filmmaking, since there was both more mainstream support for the film
industry and superior filmmaking technology available.
B. It is impossible to talk about Alfred Hitchcock’s work without discussing the
Production Code.
1. The Motion Picture Production Code was a system put in place by Motion
Picture Association of American that consisted of a set of extremely strict
guidelines regarding what could and could not be shown in movies during
that period.
a) Led by a man named Joseph Breen, this was a system to censor
content that was considered morally questionable in the 40’s, and
shut down a huge amount of creative work for creators.
b) The Code censored virtually all violence, nudity and seuxal
content, even implied. Couples could not be shown to sleep in
beds together, and instead had to sleep in separate beds.
c) The code also censored violence and murder as subject matter
d) Failure to comply with the code would prevent films from being
shown in nearly every theater in the US, and would more or less
guarantee that the film would be a financial disaster. (Leff 1999)
C. Naturally, this code affected Alfred Hitchcock’s films in a dramatic way.
 1. Since he typically portrayed both sexual content and violent content on
screen, the US Production Code censored huge parts of his creative
vision
III. Rebecca
A. After moving his career to the US, Hitchcock’s first film, Rebecca, was severely
censored by the Production Code’s standards.
B. During filming, the story centered around a woman finding out that her husband
murdered his previous wife.
C. Mid way through filming, the story of the film was censored to comply with
Breen’s guidelines,and the film was no longer about murder. Instead, Rebecca
died accidentally, virtually destroying the dramatic twist that held the film
together. (Leff 1999)
D. While the producer was outraged about what had been done to his film,
Hitchcock approached the situation with a sense of humor, instead, creatively
inventing ways to circumvent the code while still employing his own creative
vision. (Leff 1999)
IV. Notorious
A. After several more films that managed to largely avoid being censored, Hitchcock
began production on Notorious, considered one of his masterpieces by today’s
standards.
B. Released in 1946, Notorious was also heavily censored for it’s political content in
a post WWII America, as well as some violent subject matter.
C. Hitchcock instead emphasized the romantic elements of the plot, poking fun at
the Production Code in a scene later in the film where the two leads kiss for
nearly three minutes, breaking it off every three seconds so as not to violate the
Code’s rule of constraining displays like these to three seconds. (Leer, 1999)
D. Transistion: By the 50’s, the Production Code was beginning to fall apart. Breen
had retired, and the more liberal Geoff Shurlock had taken his place overseeing
the production code. Most films managed to slip by one way or another, and
Hitchcock was no exception. (Gottlieb 2014)
V. Psycho
A. Psycho, likely Hitchcock’s best known film, continued this trend.
B. The famous murder scene in the film, taking place in a shower, was deliberately
designed by Hitchcock to to imply nudity while never actually showing it, thus
complying with the production code’s standards, just barely.
C. This was all done both for stylistic purposes, but also to stretch the boundaries of
what the censors would allow, in an attempt to undermine the Production Code’s
authority
VI. Post-Production Code
A. In the late 1960’s, the Production Code had almost completely fallen apart.
1. It was virtually impossible for the agency to enforce their guidelines, so
filmmakers quickly stopped complying with them altogether.
2. Moving forward, the MPAA established the modern rating system for film
(Leff 1999)
 B. Hitchcock continued making films into the 70’s no longer hindered by the Code’s
guidelines, but continuing to use techniques of metaphor and implication that he
had been forced to use in the past

Conclusion
I. Hitchcock’s filmmaking, while heavily censored by the United States Motion Picture
Production Code, adapted to it with a unique style of metaphor and implied themes, that
he employed early in his career, which later became a staple of his style. Today, many
directors use similar
II. These techniques continue to shape cinema today, despite the factor that production
code and its censorship have been long abandoned. Films like Psycho and Notorious
played a key role in the modern practice of filmmaking, and in the government’s place in
censoring them.
III. Bookend/memorable ending??

References

Gottlieb, S. (2014). Alfred Hitchcock. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia

Maurer, Y. (2015). Sometimes a Bomb is more like a Blowup: Hitchcock's Sabotage.

Interdisciplinary Humanities, 32(1), 29-41.

Leff, L. J. (1999). Hitchcock and the Censors. World & I, 14(8), 108.