Alfred Hitchcock: "Only in the Anticipation"

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

~Alfred Hitchcock

    This is a pretty good point. Although having unforeseen surprises suddenly happen isn't bad, a lot of scenes are better off with the action being something the reader already knows is coming. It adds extra layers of emotion and suspense to a scene, and it also adds one of the unique things a person can only experience while reading: foresight.
    Lots of Alfred Hitchcock's films apply this method pretty well; one in particular. I don't want to give anything away since the scene is very important for the plot, but there's a part of a story where we see a "bang" coming, and there's a whole countdown scene in which we see a sympathetic minor character (who has absolutely no idea of the imminent disaster) in peril, and we watch him going along his way, taking his sweet time to get in a position where he'd be safe from the danger, and by the time the countdown finally reaches its end, the viewer's heart is pounding (well, mine was, at least).
    Dramatic irony has a lot to do with this kind of thing, with the reader/viewer knowing about the oncoming disaster without the character being aware of it. That makes any hesitation or dawdling on a character's part a cause for anxiety to the reader, and when a character actually comes close to discovering the threat, it's exciting (and sometimes frustrating, when the character almost gets the big picture but then loses it). The dramatic irony is key for prompting these emotions, stirring up anticipation of what's about to happen.
    Personally I think it also helps a lot to make the scene unpredictable, so that the situation could go either way. Because predictability is something we try to avoid at all times in writing, right? And if the main character is being threatened with death in the middle of the story, and it's not a genre where they could be brought back to life or something, it's kind of obvious that the hero is going to get out of their situation. But if it's a minor character being threatened with something that would take them out of the picture, or if the main character just risks losing something important but not absolutely vital, then there's a cause to be concerned because the loss can actually happen. An unpredictable situation like this is something that a reader wouldn't be able to guess on; a scene they would have to keep reading in order to find out if the "bang" really occurs.
    So this concept that Alfred Hitchcock (who's been called "the master of suspense") is talking about is really an interesting one to use in writing. Has anyone here watched any of Hitchcock's films before?