Based on the Article; 'The Object and The Face Notorious, Bergman and the Close ups'

BEYOND FACES

Hitchcock wrote that; ''Everything in cinema 'begins with the actor's face.'' This can clearly be seen in many kind of Hitchcock' s movies. Beyond of Hitchcock's usage of faces, many styles, meanings and feelings can be inferred.

Face is the main part of an actor's body that audience's most attention is firstly on the actor's faces during the movie. Hitchcock has been used this on a very clever way that by using faces he reflects many kind of emotions, he sometimes gives clues about narration and actor's psychological approach and he develops technics. His close-up's on faces emphasizes these. Because of close up, actors should be careful about their actings that minimal acting mistakes are even can be seen obviously. So, sometimes actors minimalize their actings. Sometimes, the max amount of emotional power is achieved despite of this minimal amount of facial gesture. Narrative sequence, style and camera's position are a few of the reasons. Juxtapositions of facial pictures with  silent can result in Hitchcock's one of the favorite style called 'Pure Cinema' . In Pure Cinema, many meanings can be inferred from a few pictures.

Close-up's to faces with black&white associates with the neorealism wave in such a way that this wave includes the minimalist pictures belongs to realism. Not only the characteristics of Italian neorealism can be seen in Hitchcock's  close-ups, but also, Andre Bazin's realistic editing style can be seen. In Notorious, the kissing scene happens among a long take.  This scene is like, there is an improvisation btw the actors. On the other side, if Eisenstein's editing style is considered, close ups can break down a film and  it can be hard to catch the exact emotions of combined scenes. However, Hitchcock likes to use decoupage and this helps to provide the feeling of continuity. This technic keeps the audience's interest constantly.

One of the remarkable reason of being popular the Hitchcock's close ups is that the beauty of female actresses are worth to be watched. The mouth,eye are being shot in very attractive and erotic way. The producer David O. Selznick writes that “Every beautiful shot of Bergman's is a great deal of money added to the returns on the picture and I urge Mr. Kern and Mr. Ratoff  to start to work on a list of where re-take close-ups might be made''.