Actually, this is Carlyle (pictured below) on Dickens, but the application to Hitchcock is clear enough:



“. . . deeper than all, if one has the eye to see deep enough, dark,
fateful, silent elements, tragical to look upon, and hiding amid
dazzling radiances as of the sun, the elements of death itself.”



Dickens and Hitchcock both hid within the conventions of popular art,
and one misses a lot, one misses close to everything, if one takes
their disguises too literally.