Research into the history of a thriller film- Introduction Miss Georgiou

       Research into  the history of a thriller film

Thriller films have been around since the start of cinema and have been thrilling and creating suspense for audiences ever since. This includes a wide range of films such as Vertigo by Hitchcock to modern thriller films such as Taken and The Bourne Ultimatum.

1950's :

The thriller films of the 1950's were overall quite basic and very mild compared to today's advanced thrillers.A film such as The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton was in black and white and had no special effects.Also violence and blood was non existent in the clip although the plot has murder in it which in modern films would be graphic and gory. Most thriller films made in the 1950 would be rated U or PG as they were excessive for the time but now would be considered weak or boring this emphasizes the difference between then and now.The audiences of the time were quite sheltered in cinema from what could have been.Other example of 1950's films are Bad Day at Black Rock,The Killing and Jack the Ripper.This decade of film shows how thrillers do not need lots of special effects to keep suspense up and can tell a story without graphic images.The narrative of these films were quite straight forward with little deviation from the main thing in the film.This compared to later films which can be quite confusing and have an ending that does not explain everything is quite different from modern film.This type of narative can be seen in the limited themes used and straight forward characters.  

1960's:

1960's films were starting to increase the profile of the thriller film with big names starting to help such as Alfred Hitchcock, Jesus Franco and Stanley Doden. Arguably the biggest film was Hitchcock's Psycho which was highly regarded and praised even today. Films were now becoming more daring and exciting with violence and nudity becoming more accepted but still not very graphic compared to today.In one scene in Psycho a woman is having a shower which would have not been accepted before. Then a man with a knife comes in and starts stabbing her. In the end we see blood going down the drain which again would be unthinkable ten years before.This shows how themes were becoming more accepted in cinema and boundaries were starting to go.Audiences from now on were becoming more lenient with what they watched. Others films from the 1960's were Five Minutes to Live,Maniac and Z.This decade of films shows how themes and narratives are changing in acceptability but still do not deviate too much from the previous decade.They are still quite toned down in the ways things are portrayed.

1970:

Thriller films were now becoming more advanced visually and now were expressing violence in a more visual way. Also nudity is becoming more acceptable. A big film that was released in the seventies was Jaws which is about a shark terrorizing a island.Many parts in the film have large amounts of blood and there are scenes with mutilated body parts. This is a massive difference from 20 years earlier when blood was not allowed, so we can now see how over time the audience viewing tastes have become de-sensitised to graphic images.Other examples of films of the seventies are The Driver,Black Sunday and Armageddon.This decade shows how audience taste ha now changed completely from before.Narratives are now changing more than ever before there are unexpected things happening in the plot and characters are not as straightforward as before in cinema.Things are becoming more complicate overall in many ways.

1980:
The eighties brought thriller films that were mainly focused on action and violence and were pushing the boundaries on what could be seen on screen. These films include big blockbuster such as Die Hard,Rambo,Shoot to Kill and The Untouchables. All these films have many deaths and constant violence throughout. This is a continuation of the violence that audiences wanted in the previous decade but taken to more of an extreme.Violence is now totally acceptable. Most of these films still do not make use of special effects as it does not fit in with the genre as thriller is generally realistic.This again shows how audiences have changed what they would like to view.

1990's:
The 90's were a new time for thriller films with special effects and CGI at the disposal it made films that could not be done ever before.Films such as The Sixth Sense, Hard Rain and Payback with a more detailed plot line can show how there has been a shift in taste away from pure violence.Many new things could now be done with films that could not be done before so films could become more in depth and have a much more real feel to them.This decade shows how a change in technology can change what films people go and see and the films content.Now the narrative's are much more complicated with things that we could not have even guessed such as the end of The Sixth Sense.Films can have many more twist and turns which have not been seen in cinema before.

Overall thriller films have changed drastically in a very short amount of time. They have gone from very conservative films to extremely violent ones only ten years later. This shows how not only films have changed but also viewing tastes.This will assist me in that I can see how successful thriller over time have worked on themes and then put them into my clip.Then I will have a good range of themes rather than them being all the same with the same outcome. Also I can now see how thriller have changed and to make it as modern as possible which will make it better for the current time.

I can now apply this to my clip as now I can see what has worked at different times throughout cinema.I can incorporate a small part of some genres and put them together as now I know what things make a successful thriller film at different times and what is suitable for my type of thriller film.These mixes could come from any genre as they all have something that could be used.

Top 10 Thriller Films

1.Hannibal    Box Office $165,092,268
2. The Silence of the Lambs  Orion  Box Office $130,742,9222
3.Basic Instinct  Box Office  $ 117,727,224
4. Se7en  $100,125,643
5.Red Dragon $93,149,898
6. Saw II $87,039,965
7. Saw III  $80,238,724
8. The Bone Collector $66,518,655
9. Saw IV $63,300,095
10. The Cell  $61,334,059

The themes of these top grossing films are mainly adult and show lots of blood and gore. This can be seen especially in the Saw franchise and The silence of the Lambs which are very violent, this is why we have decided to make our film more violent and for an older audience than before. The characters in the films are also generally split into two with psychopaths and murderers or vulnerable victims.Examples of these in the films are Hannibal Lecter a cannibalistic psychopath and Tracy in Se7en a blond vulnerable victim. This is why we have only stuck to two characters as otherwise it would over complicate the relatively short scene.

The narrative of these famous films also are not straight forward with the killer getting away until the end; films such as Se7en which does not show who the killer is until a long time into the film.Other films show the narrative from the another perspective such as Red Dragon and we know what the villain has done and who he is.Finally the Target audience for these film are strictly adult and have strong violence and language and we have also gone down this path for our scene.Overall these films have clearly influenced our scene in many ways.