Comprehension Passage
Read the passage and answer the following questions.
Alfred Hitchcock, in full Sir Alfred Hitchcock, (born August 13, 1899, London, England—died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, California, U.S.), is an English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive career. His films are marked by a macabre sense of humour and a somewhat bleak view of the human condition.
Hitchcock grew up in London’s East End in a milieu once haunted by the notorious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, talk of whom was still current in Hitchcock’s youth two decades later. Hitchcock went to St. Ignatius College before attending the London County Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation in 1913–14. He worked in the sales department at W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works Company until 1918 when he moved to the advertising department. Giving in to his artistic side, Hitchcock enrolled at the University of London in 1916 to take drawing and design classes.
Hitchcock’s first film as a director was the comedy Mrs. Peabody (1922; also called Number 13), which was not completed, for lack of funding. But it was The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) that both he and students of the cinema would come to regard as his first “real” work—and one that very much drew on his youthful surroundings. Hitchcock’s first talking picture was the thriller Blackmail (1929). One of the year’s biggest hits in England, it became the first British film to make use of synchronized sound only after the completed silent version was post-dubbed and partly re-shot. Hitchcock formed his own production company, Transatlantic Pictures, which would make films in America and England. Its first film was also his first colour film, Rope (1948), which was based on the sensational 1924 Leopold-Loeb murder case.
His many classics are widely acknowledged—including The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds—and in these films, Hitchcock’s genius as both filmmaker and storyteller is abundantly evident. Hitchcock’s greatest gift was his mastery of the technical means to build and maintain suspense. To this end, he used innovative camera viewpoints and movements, elaborate editing techniques, and effective soundtrack music often supplied in his best films by Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock has been called by some the greatest of all directors, and the most admired, and the case has been made that he was all of these.
Which was Hitchcock's first 'talking picture?'
1
Blackmail (1929)
2
Rope (1948)
3
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
4
Mrs. Peabody (1922)
5
Number 13 (1922)