Film School Rejects:

When filmmakers and other folks in the know make mention of “pure cinema,” they are referring to films that rely heavily on their imagery for storytelling. Cinema is, after all, a visual medium, not just a place for dialogue to come alive, and as such to distinguish itself from other storytelling media cinema must take advantage of its particular facets.

Alfred Hitchcock was perhaps the most significant purveyor of pure cinema in his time, he was a filmmaker that infiltrated your senses and emotions more often on a visual level than a written one.

I’ve been a huge Hitchcock ever since I found out one of my relatives worked with him in the 1950s. As the article points out, we think of him as a director of suspense films but his visual artistry and manipulation of your emotions through images was incredible.