1 HITCHCOCK
H, A to Z (themes, motifs)
H, A to Z (Individual films)
August 3, 2022—8188 words
Auction
Skin Game:
Saboteur:
Barry’s auction of Mrs. Sutton’s jewelry, when he double talks to stall for time and protection
39 Steps:
Richard Henney’s political doubletalk
North:
Thornhill’s babbling at the auction
AUTEUR
H reflexive and self-reflexive filmmaker who inscribes himself within his films, cameos, authorial surrogates, narratives as worlds of self-conscious irony
H acknowledge and invokes the role of the audience in his films
Self-reflexive: emphasizes over authorial interpretation
It privileges the role of the author over the quality and significance of the world that’s fabricated (R. Allen)
Action Vs. Character
The tension between character and action
In H, action always takes precedence over character, which is why H’s narratives lend themselves to structural and morphological analysis. (Elthasseur)
America: H’s Response to America
Like that of other intellectuals (Adorno, T. Mann), H’s Response to America was a volatile mixture of fascination and repulsion
Intrigued by the particular transaction between old world and new world
Extinction of European high culture
Ambiguity in America to filmmakers that were leftist (loftist) intellectual and emigrees
Old and New Order
In H, the entire meaning or emotional effect depends on the use of familiar cultural codes of 19th century, alongside images of present.
19th century European background and collaboration with Selznick
Contrast between old and new order
Naremore in Allen (ed) Hitchcock’
The mansions in Rebecca, Suspicion, and Paradine become virtual characters, symbolizing patriarchal oppressions and passionate romance, and they affect the modern-day people who inhabit those houses
Appearance Vs. Reality
The disparity between appearance and reality
Those whom we idolize play us safe. (Shadow)
Appearance must not be confused with reality.
Artist
Variability, Unity
H’s movies are much more varied than most people realize.
Unity Within Diversity
But they’re knit together by remarkable coherence within their variety.
They are like rich rotations and recombinations of few central themes and aesthetic preoccupations.
The action of loss and search and recovery underlie all of H’s films.
The outcomes of these actions provide standards to measure human success and failure and the temper of the universe itself (Brill, 4).
Consummate Technician
Model of pop entertainer, free from artistic pretensions
But H is more interesting and complex than that.
H’s films brought the public together into an audience.
H’s death brough expression of community
America never understood his films
The official H and the knowing H
Taylor: Dismissive view of H
A primitive with no aspiration to art; no serious intellect concerns; a practical moviemaker; H. not an artist or thinker
Taylor rules out H’s knowingness
Truffaut thought that he was intellectually superior to Hitchcock
BALLS (DANCES, WALTZ)
The human body is the first of the vehicles
Condemnation of dance, which gives the body its fatal seductive slide
Levy: Is there any H film, in which the dance serves a positive function and signifies positive meaning?
Rebecca
Spellbound
Shadow of Doubt (waltzes, Merry Widow)
Notorious
The Wrong Man (Stork club)
Vertigo: the dansant
BIRDS
Secret Agent (1936):
The birds flattering outside the Langenthal Kirsche announce chaos within
The Man Who Knew (stuffed animals)
Psycho
The Birds
Boredom
Boredom, too much leisure time, and early retirement serve as motivation for excitement and movement from observers to active participants
The 39 Steps
Shadow
Under Capricorn
Rear Window
To Catch
Man Who Knew
Vertigo
Torn Curtain
Family Plot?
CAREER
Reputation:
Initially critical reaction was of distaste and revulsion
Then, second generation of critics “reassess” H as a earnest moralist and filmmaker of style and finesse
The amount of critical and theoretical attention accorded to Hitchcock is in excess of any other director’s fair share, past or present
I H worthy of his reputation
The nature of excessive attention
40 years after his death (in 1980), H remains the most popular and easily identifiable figures in the medium’s history.
H’s reputation is not merely attributable to his academic fetishization
There’s endless fascination with H, both inside and outside academe
H and his oeuvre embody/represent the possibilities of the medium itself
Lindsay Anderson: H’s long career is intimately bound up with the history of cinema as a medium. (Intro by R. Allen).
UK Masterpieces:
Secret Agent (1936): is part of unbroken series of masterpieces from 39 Steps thru Lady Vanishes (1938)
He made 5 great works in 3 years (Spoto, p, 46)
Second line of uninterrupted masterpieces, 1954-1964, from rear Window to Marnie
UK vs. US
H’s UK films are about traditional authority, rigid class structure, etiquette, linguistic grace
US films:
Civilization untamed, the frontier
Land of possibilities; existential crisis; desire meets materialism.
The power, scale, rigidity of Amer institutions, of Hollywood filmmaking were greater in Hollywood than in US
Hollywood is a constellation of conventions, techniques, genres
H turned those devices to his own account, to his own advantage
H’s Amer films at once benefited from and inflect/enrich the possibilities of such conventions.
Those conventions, in turn, became a shorthand in his commentary on Amer culture (p. 15).
H in the 1940s: with the exception of Shadow and Notorious, the decade was a time of searching
While the 1950s represent the full flowering of his natural and mature talent (Rothman)
Spellbound and Paradine Case are as much Selznick’s films as H’s, unlike Shadow and Notorious.
Wrong Man and Vertigo rep a bridge between character-centered films of the 1940s and 1950s and character-effacing films of late 60s and 70s
The 70s launch him as the director of postmodern American aesthetic.
1950s Best films
H achieved both an increased control and increased loosening of control
Greater assertion of himself as a creative director
Greater assertion of the power of performers to achieve effects thru movement and quality of presence
Greater trust in the audience to respond “correctly” to his films and recognition as master.
Stress on atmosphere
Stress on resonance of performers
Tight plotting
Ingenious camerawork
H’s films of 50s the closest he came to make cinema based on psychology concept of character, (more than in 30s UK films or 40s Us films). P, M. Cohen, 85)
Up until mid 1960s, H’s films could be situated vis a vis novelistic traditions
They either opposed the tradition, or adapted them, or mourn their loss
The films of the 60s registered loss of gender complentarity; loss of novelistic idea of a character defined by psychology
They reflected H’s sense of loss; his bitterness about it.
In 1970s, no star persona in the last 3 films
No parts that would lead themselves to these personae
We don’t pay attention to who is in them
Unavailability of Grant (retired in 66) or Stewart (too old).
Last 3 films lack the idea of character to which the star system conforms
Torn Curtain: 2 stars, Newman and Andrews, like dead weights on the film
In the 1970s, H made films without the nostalgia for gender complementarity
Though very different, each is a variation on a postmodern idea.
They are more gender-diffuse
More morally relativistic
H exercised freedom with few constraints
No priority of plot, character
More about effects than meaning
Playful, free associative
Topaz: blend of accents and nationalities
Frenzy: link of food, marriage, and murder
Family Plot: destinations that are inconsequential or mistaken (P. M. Cohen).
In the 70s, the films make no attempt to recreate the “feel” of the original tradition. (P, M. Cohen, 163)
Hitchcockian:
Single word synonym in contemporary campaign for masterful control of mechanism of suspense and guarantee of audience satisfaction.
Late H:
Vertigo: Action leads to abyss and death
In the last phase, H no longer interested in affirming the idea of self and complementary couple
Post Films (after Marnie)
Isolated touches of brilliance
Marnie: hulk at the end of the street
Frenzy: backward tracking shot
Family Plot: use of parallel narration
In earlier films up to Birds, films of integration, whereas late H, easier to break apart his universe into particular ingredients (sequences) because they are disintegrated.
They allow us to isolate the ingredients of H’s universe and grasp them separately (S. Zezek, p. 5)
CLIMAX
See National Monuments
Blackmail: The British Museum climax, the first of 3 H climaxes to the place in or on a national monument
It lacks the overt political reference of the other films
Saboteur: Statue of Liberty
North by Northwest: Mount Rushmore
Man Who Knew (56): Victoria and Albert Hall
Dial M and Strangers: Rapid crosscutting between 2 locales (Spoto, p. 232)
Dial M: From the apartment of Margo to Tony’s club
Strangers: Forrest Hill sewer grating; guy must escape the tennis game
COHERENCE
I treasure the richness and density of individual sequences, while finding the whole disturbing
Torn Curtain
Topaz
Frenzy: flaw
The expendability of the Billie Whitelaw scenes, which throw the film off balance and temper with the thriller
COLOR
Analysis of color in terms of groupings or systems of color.
Some have contrast or opposed meanings
All may overlap with one another in different way
Edward Brannigan: “The articulation of color in a Filmic System: Deux ou Trois choses,” in Dalle Vacchi and B. Price (eds) Color: The Film Reaser, pp. 170-182
Focus: Routledge Film Readers
- Allen
Half of H’s Amer films are in color, including Rope and Under Capricorn (his productions).
Use o color experimental
Rope: carefully controlled use of color
Color can be uniquely discriminated and can carry symbolic value
Red usually means warning
Colors also gain significances by ther association and contrast with other colors.
Costuming in H’s is the most privileged color index
It’s attached to character and can be calibrated to changes and development in story.
Costume of protags and extras in public spaces
Frenzy
North by Northwest
First, showing the location in colorless and objectless space
Building up the elements of color design alongside the construction of mise en scene
Certain objects: lampshades and flowers within interiors become privileged bearers of color, but their color can be calibrated without undermining the design’s overall surrealism (R. Allen, p. 222).
Color in the room of G. Kaplan insipid and anonymous, creams and beiges—standards in Amer hotel
Nonexistence of its inhabitants
Midwest—Grant is framed from above standing at the crossroad
Landscape denuded denied) of signs of life and color
Beiges and grays of colorless, vacated wasteland, field of dried up corn (wasteland of America)
It evokes the degree zero reached by Grant (R. Allen, p. 128).
Cool colors—pale blue, sky blue and aquamarine
Green-lime green
Cool colors emotional detachment or distance
Cool is the domination of reason over emotion
UN bdg—image of new world order, controlled by impersonal and calculated machination
Male agents in dark blue suits, impossible to visually distinguish from a foe (Allen, p. 229).
To Catch
The colors in the flowers market scene, reds against white.
Colorfulness: artifice is calibrated in the costume ball at the end, which in narrative terms is gratuitous
CONFESSION
See Guilt
Manxman: H’s last silent
Rebecca
Paradine Case
I Confess
Vertigo: suppressed confession
All of them hinge on confession
CONSUMERISM (Materialism)
See Jewels
In each US film, consumer society is thematically central or referenced:
Rebecca
Foreign Correspondent
Suspicion: Johnny penniless, consumed by ambition
Shadow: used, engraved ring
Lifeboat: the mink coat
Rear Window: rings and jewelry
CRIME
Criminal tendencies that exist in presumably innocent characters (Spoto, p. 7)
Discovery of Crime
The Lodger
Suspicion
Crime Settings (Scenes of Crime)
Broad daylight is the locus for most crimes in H films, and false protection of crowds or the police
Man Who Knew Too Much (56):
The stabbing in the marketplace in broad daylight, amid false protection of crowed. It is hot exquisitely and contrpuntally (Spoto)
The Bird
Crime and Sex:
To Catch a Thief: comic depiction; theft and sex
Marnie: link between kleptomania and pathological sexuality
Family Plot: Fran kidnapping and stealing diamonds, she feels “tingly” and sexually aroused.
Variables:
Murder
Victim
Mode
Setting
Deviance
Crime
Contemporary
Flashback
Graphic
Violence
CULTURE COLLISION
Contrast of cultures: old order and new order
British manners and colonialism—
Under Capricorn
Man Who Knew
Rebecca
Torn Curtain
Topaz
Edgar A. Poe
H, Why Am I Afraid of Death?
“I don’t want to seem immodest, but I cant help comaring what I’ve done to put in my films, with what Edgar A. Poe put in his novels, “a completey unbelievable story told to the readers with such a spellbinding logic that you get the I pression that the same story could happen to you tomorrow..(Note 1, H’s America, p. 133).
H is similar to Poe, the progenitor of roman noir
Like Poe, H is aesthete who appeals to popular and mass entertainment
H, middle position between 19th and 20th century
H, between Poe and Hollywood
H, link between Europe and America
H, ling between old and new order
H, between aestheticism and modernism
(Naremore, p. 270 I R. Allen, Hitchcock)
ENDING: LAST SHOT
Often the last scene is driving a car
Suspicion:
Johnny expresses concern for Lina, and turns the car around, and together they drive back home
Notorious, Birds, Marnie—a man takes control and drives a beleaguered woman toward the prospect (if not reality) of a new life.
Psycho: chain pulling Marion’s car out of swamps
In the last 5 films (including Birds), the very last shot has importance as the culmination of the whole action, the whole thematic progress.
Birds: The family drives, but there’s ambiguity
Suspicion:
It begins on a train, racing thru tunnel, train emerges into light
North:
Ends with train going thru the tunnel of darkness, phallic image.
Shadow:
Scene next to last also set on train, when Uncle tries to kill Young Charlie and then falls to his death
EXTERIOR.INTERIOR
Voyeurism: what is enclosed privacy
Foreign Correspondent
Notorious
Rope
I Confess
Rear Window
Psycho
Topaz
EXPERMINTATION
Lifeboat and Rope: companion pieces of formal experimentation
Films of ideas where romance is subordinated to talk and overt action precluded by the physically restricted space/settings
The excesses of technical experiment—an attempt to make up for narrative problems?
Distracting the audience from problematic thematic issues
Both films begin with sudden violence
Structure: a Group of “types” in a confined space.
Rope:
Instead of being a polished thriller, it became an experimental film
(like Michael Snow’s camera-centered Wavelength (1966) and Back and Forth (1969).
EYES and EYE Glasses
Suspicion: Lina
Spellbound: Ingrid Bergman
Strangers on Train: 2 women with glasses, Miriam and Barbara;
Miriam’s strangling is reflected in the lenses of her glasses, which shatter when they fall to the ground
Miriam’s glasses are paired with the dark glasses of the blind man who Bruno helps to cross
FAIRGROUND (Amusement Parks)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Jeff and Ann in the high-ride at the fairground
Strangers on a Train
The fairground and amusement park is a symbolic projection of Miriam’s world, a world of disorder and pursuit of fun (see thrills)
Bruno follows Marion; Bruno’s deathbed carousel, stuck in a machine
Cheap glamor as the aim of life, of futility represented by circular motion of Roundabout and Great Wheel
Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai; The Third Man
Minnelli: Some Came Running
FAMILY
The family is beleaguered
The Lodger (see below)
Shadow: by mother’s brother, who tries to hide criminal activities by becoming member and part of the Newton family
Shadow was made during WWII, threat of existential invasion
Man Who Knew
Fear of tsking away something from the family
Cold War mentality
In both, the family is presented as harmonious only briefly
The family remains disrupted for most of the story of Man Who Knew
Triad of North, Psycho, Birds
The heroes of 3 films are fatherless
They have a strong, possessive mother, who perturbs the “normal” sexual relationship
North: Grant’s mother is mocking and scornful; he has been divorced (twice or 4 times)
She does accept his bribe ($20) to go with him
Psycho and Birds: blocking any sexual relationship, or lasting relationship, with women
Family (Films, in Chronological Order)
Young and Innocent:
Lady Vanishes: Austria; London
Jamaica Inn:
Rebecca: Chateau; but film begins in the city
Foreign Correspondent: NYC
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: NYC
Suspicion:
Sabotage: LA to NYC
Shadow: Santa Rosa, CA
Lifeboat: WWII water
Spellbound:
Notorious: Miami, Florida, then Rio, Brazi
Paradine Case:
Rope: NYC
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright: London
Strangers on Train: Washington DC
I Confess: Quebec
Dial M: London
Rear Window: NYC, Village, 10th Street
To Catch a Thief: French Riviera
Trouble with Harry: Small Town
Man Who Knew: Morocco, then London (couple lives in Indianapolis)
Wrong Man: NYC
Vertigo: SF
North: NYC (Manhattan, Plaza Hotel), then Dakota (Mt. Rushmore)
Psycho: Phx, then CA
The Birds: SF, Bodega Bay, CA
Marnie: London and??
Torn Curtain: Europe
Topaz: Paris; Int’l
Frenzy: London (Covent Garden)
Family Plot
FEAR
His fear of making a move
Psycho: the characters and imagery have no alternative to immobility
Art that lacks mobility can only fester in the place where it’s stuck. (Toles, p. 162)
North: final shot
Fireplace
Mr. Smith: Ann, drying her hair in Jeff’s apt
Vertigo: Judy/Madeliene warms herself, kneeling by the fire.
Flashbacks
How many films have flashbacks?
How long arethe flashbacks?
Shadow of a Doubt: brief vignettes of waltzes
Stage Fright:
I Confess: the longest flashback in H’s films
Anne Baxter’s subjective flashback about false romantic past/with fulfilment; not the only film to contain lyng flashback
Flashback as a lie
Vertigo:
FORM (STYLE)
Few Amer filmmakers have openly announced that they were more interested in form than content
Like most artists, H was aware of that form creates content and form is specific to each kind of artistic expression (Kolker).
H: “I know that the construction of the story and the way in which it was told caused audiences all over the world to react and become emotional.”
Master of the cinematic form
Composition of editing of images
Intricacy and thoughtfulness of his narrative making
It’s too personal a style to imitate
(Scorsese took single shot of horse shooting in Marnie)
Psycho as a cinematic machine
The insistence on form itself constitutes essential part of H’s morality.
H’s art is the art of surface; complete devotion to surface, which is not mere technique
H as master/moralist of appearances.
For H, surface is the true profundity of the cinema (Elsaesser)
After To Catch, H’s color films were in new standard of 1: 1.84, as opposed to 1: 1.66 (R. Allen, p, 222)
Strategic use of the overhead shot
Inscription in the frame of parallel vertical bars of various kinds.
Vertical
Lexicon of images
Familiar vertical symbolism
Rothman calls t the sign of iiii
Filming characts behind bars of staircase (Shadow)
Or superimposing a vertical arrangement of light and shadow.
Psycho: death of Arbagoss
Rothman: H’s personal code, separating the viewers from what’s represented and also asserts the filmmakers mastery
Symbol of imprisonment, carrying with it the opposing idea of freedom and liberation (P.M. Cohen)
H’s framing: moving to camera off-center, when gazing at a character in he midst of a trouble.
It puts the viewer oof-balance by breaking the rules of a centered, eye-level composition of the shot.
POV Shots
The power of the POV shot in constructing identification has been exaggerated.
It is not true that to stick in a shot from a given character’s POV automatically identifies the spectator with that character
(beyond the physical position we see what the character sees)
H uses POV editing to clinch identification that already been established before
Fragmentation
Fragmentation, castration, dismemberment—in many films, t’s the body of the woman that is fragmented or disembodied
Cinema’s paradoxical ability to fragment the body and to animate it
The relation between bodies and their conversion into works of art (Brigitte Peucker, ch. 10 in R. Allen)
GAZE
The triumph of the gaze over the eye (Lacan)
Some traumatic object, H introduces is an an entirely dependent on gaze
First, he shows the petrified gaze “thrown off the rails, then he passes to its cause
The traumatic character proceeds from the gaze, from the object’s concentration by the gaze
(p, 235 S. Zizek, “In the Bold Gaze My Ruin Is Writ Large.”
H’s presentation of the gaze is based on the axiom that there’s no good measure of the gaze
One sees either too much, or not enough
H’s obsession with the gaze is omnipresent in his films
Drama of gaze is triggered off, when the gaze catches something too much, beyond the normal field of vision
GLASSES
Breaking Glass
Rebecca
Paradine Case
The Birds (Lydia)
Frenzy: Barry at restaurant with Brenda
Ingmar Bergman: Cries and Whisers
GUILT
The first sign of guilt and material proof comes in the form of confession
It’s an unconscious slip and the insistence of the letter that provides evidence for the resolution of the mystery
Spellbound: Signature of Dr. Edwards
Psycho: Marion Crane (Mary Samuels)
Vertigo: she writes a letter, then destroys it.
H plays with the notion of guilt well
He takes the audience from rooting for the hero to rooting for the villain
Strangers: When Brunodrops the lighter down the sewer grate, you’re happy
But when he finally pulls it out, you’re also happy, realizing (or not) that you’ve been rooting for the villain.
HERO
Gentleman
Lurking within the gentleman’s hero is a sexual predator, or murderer of women
Suspicion: Grant intent to kill his wife
Shadow; J. Cotton, murderer of widows
HITCHOCKIAN Vs. HITCHCOK
All of which in H’s films
A creative, almost supernatural force
A concept, the Hitcockian experience, a composite of elements associated with his films and public persona, the thriller genre, cinema (style) itself.
Hitchcockian is more than H
TV appearances, tongue in cheek delivery, extravagant, drawing attention to the genre and to himself (Paula M. Cohen, p. 165).
His sustained, critical and satirical account of American social institutions and cultural practices.
Icons of American public (Statue of Liberty, Washington, Mount Rushmore)
Advertising agency/industry (North)
Small Town America and suburbs (Shadow, The Bords)
Psychoanalysis (Spellbound)—H reflected the enthusiasm for and transfer of psychoanalysis.
In many films, connection between marriage and murder, or murder and marriage
H was Anglo-Catholic and his films are about sin and confession (along the lines of Grahame Greene). (F. Jameson).
IDENTITY
Is the double identity a matter of choice, self-selected, or imposed upon and forced upon by forces (political) and by whom (agency)
It’s a process (long, short, complex)
Do they get at the end to one identity? And is it the orifinal or a new, different one, and how different
Protagonists forced to conceal their identity and change their names in order to uncover a secret, or to discover something about their real identities
Forced identity; role playing
39 Steps: Richard Henney
Rebecca: No name
Foreign Correspondent: Johnny Jones
Spellbound: John Ballentine
Notorious: Alicia
Stage Fright: Eve Gill
Strangers on Train:
To Catch: Frances Stevens and Joh Robbie
Vertigo: Judy is Judy Barton
North: Roger Thornhill Eve Kendall
Psycho
The Birds
Marnie
Triad of films: Wrong Man, Vertigo, North
Wrong Man: false identity, hero is wrongly accused after being identified as burglar by witnesses
Verigo: hero is mistaken about identity of Madeleine
North:
Soviet spies mistakenly identify the hero as CIA agent George Kaplan
Jewelry
Jewelry as symbol of the spurious vulg of the apparent vs. the real
The Ring
Shadow:
Lifeboat:
Diamond bracelet of Connie Porter (Tallulah Banhead) is used for fish bait, a bewildered fish pokes around it
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright
I Confess:
The unreality of Ruth’s psychic life is represented by a favorite H object, elaborate jewelry
To Catch Thief
Vertigo
Frenzy
Family Plot
JOURNEY (See Search)
A physical journey becomes a process of moral and intellectual education
In many films, the protagonists are uprooted and move around.
39 Steps
Lady Vanishes
North by NW
KEYS
Key represents secrets;
Keys of the household represents a greater degree of control over the situation
Rebecca
Notorious
Key to the wine cellar
Under Capricorn
When Henrietta is given the keys to the household, it signals her return to strength
Strangers on Train
Dial M for Murder
KISS
The romantic pursuit that is realized
In the supreme and explosive moment of the kiss
Fo F, all sexuality is incipiently perverse, including heterosexual
Anarchic impulses of human sexuality
(Spellbound: Rhonda Fleming)
Staging the kiss, expression of romantic ideal
Spellbound: Ingrid and Peck kiss as doorways fly open behind them to infinity
Vertigo: Stewart and Novak kiss as the camera circles around them 360 degrees.
North: Grant and Eva Marie in a moving train, while turning in a the manner of waltz.
Knowledge
While the quest for knowledge is to redone who’s deserted or loved, the obtain knowledge is;
Coercive in Marnie
Disillusionary in Shadow
Both coercive and disillusionary in Vertigo
In H’ work, the way in which the nature of knowledge is based upon and helps to define distinctions between gender and sexuality
H’s films are about the search for truth as the revelations of virtue and villainy
The impact of that search for truth and its failure for the formation of the couple.
H uses suspense to control our knowledge about what is happening in the narrative vis-à-vis the knowledge of the characters within the narrative
What the charac knw vs, what we viewers know
H combines suspense with black humor to subvert our customary moral aspects.
North by Northwest
It shows both structure and theme with other wrong man movies.
But unlike them, it presents the implications of misrecognition seriously
So it’s not plot, but the manners (style)in which he narrates them.
LACK (Space)
Triad of Vertigo, North, Psycho
3 different variations of filling the gap in the Other
Their formal problem is the same: relationship between a lack and a factor (person) that tries to compensate for it.
Vertigo: hero compensates for the women he loves
North: empty name, name of nonexistent person
Psycho: Norman wants to take his mother’s place in the real.
LOVE
In most H’s films, love sees deeper than the most brilliant empiricism (Brille, 275)
Spellbound:
Constance believes in John’s innocence, despite contrary evidence by colleague, police,courts, even her old teacher and emotional father Brulov
Commitment to faith and love distinguish the figures who can resume their innocence.
Topaz: Camera rotates around Juanita and her lover
The camera maneuver relays, no intense emotion, instead drawing attention to itself for visual effect.
Vertigo: Scottie ecstatic embrace of Judy (made over into Madeleine)
LOSS
Human Need for Love
The last 2 masterpieces, Birds and Marnie, are infused with a sense of loss, urgency, emotional directness/duress (Rothman, 248)
It them apart from all of H’s films
MARRIAGE
Considering patriarchal ideolog
Value placed on marriage as institution
Demands of the Production Code
H’s approach to marriage from Rich and Strange to Frenzy is bleak and skeptical
It leads to perfunctory nature of H’s happy endings
Construction and reconstruction of hetero couple presented without much evidence of engagement or conviction, or with overt skepticism(Rear Window)
Robin Hood, p. 246
Rich and Strange:
The couple tries to escape boredom and stillness of their marriage by seeking adventure (see thrill), then finding adventure is worse, and so sink back into boredom and stillness with a sigh of relief (Robin Wood)
Critique: H’s films cannot produce an alternative to bourgeois marriage as we know this institution.
But they do provide a thprough and radical analysis of the difficulties placed on successful hetero unions by the social structures and sexual organization of patriarchal capitalism
Analysis of the film’s complex dramatization of sexual politics. (Robin Wood, p. 248).
Sabotage:
Mrs. Verlov accidentally murder her husband
Rebecca: Maxim , widower, marries hapless and helpless girl and she matures
Suspicion: the unresolvably problematic film
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: generic marriage
Shadow of Doubt: class difference between spouses
Under Capricorn:
Anomaly disturbs the resolution
Paradine Case
Rear Window: first sequence, Jeff refuses to marry Lisa
Then Thorwald nurders his nagging wife
Dial M for Murder
Man Who Knew Too Much: marital tensions
Marnie: Mark forces marriage to dominate and tame and cure Marnie’s neuroses
Marriage (Films, A to Z)
Young and Innocent:
Lady Vanishes: Austria; London
Jamaica Inn:
Rebecca: Chateau; but film begins in the city
Foreign Correspondent: NYC
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: NYC
Suspicion:
Sabotage: LA to NYC
Shadow: Santa Rosa, CA
Lifeboat: WWII water
Spellbound:
Notorious: Miami, Florida, then Rio, Brazi
Paradine Case:
Rope: NYC
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright: London
Strangers on Train: Washington DC
I Confess: Quebec
Dial M: London
Rear Window: NYC, Village, 10th Street
To Catch a Thief: French Riviera
Trouble with Harry: Small Town
Man Who Knew: Morocco, then London (couple lives in Indianapolis)
Wrong Man: NYC
Vertigo: SF
North: NYC (Manhattan, Plaza Hotel), then Dakota (Mt. Rushmore)
Psycho: Phx, then CA
The Birds: SF, Bodega Bay, CA
Marnie: London and??
Torn Curtain: Europe
Topaz: Paris; Int’l
Frenzy: London (Covent Garden)
Family Plot
MONUMENTS (NATIONAL)
Issue: Do nat’l monuments have obvious connection to the plot/
North:
Eve Kendal dangles perilously from Mount Rushmore.
Mount Rushmore stands for the democratic principles at stake.
Strangers
Images of Fed Govt bear no obvious relation to the plot. (Friedman and Mulligan in H’s America).
MOTHER
Young and Innocent:
Lady Vanishes: Austria; London
Jamaica Inn:
Rebecca: Chateau; but film begins in the city
Foreign Correspondent: NYC
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: NYC
Suspicion:
Sabotage: LA to NYC
Shadow: Santa Rosa, CA
Lifeboat: WWII water
Spellbound:
Notorious: Miami, Florida, then Rio, Brazi
Paradine Case:
Rope: NYC
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright: London
Strangers on Train: Washington DC
I Confess: Quebec
Dial M: London
Rear Window: NYC, Village, 10th Street
To Catch a Thief: French Riviera
Trouble with Harry: Small Town
Man Who Knew: Morocco, then London (couple lives in Indianapolis)
Wrong Man: NYC
Vertigo: SF
North: NYC (Manhattan, Plaza Hotel), then Dakota (Mt. Rushmore)
Psycho: Phx, then CA
The Birds: SF, Bodega Bay, CA
Marnie: London and??
Torn Curtain: Europe
Topaz: Paris; Int’l
Frenzy: London (Covent Garden)
Family Plot
MOVIE STARS
How the movie stars, esp female ones are first introduced?
Are they deglamorized
39 Steps: first seen wearing unflattering glasses, which fall to the ground when she is kissed, and are never seen again
Secret Agent: wrapped in a formless, long bath towel, cold cream on her face and cap on her head
Suspicion: glasses Joan Fontaine on train, reading
The Lady Vanishes: Madeleine Carroll
Spellbound: Ingrid’s glasses deglamorized
Torn Curtain: No need to deglamorize Sarah (she is already deglamorozed)
MURDER!
Rothman
Lodger: Murder is invoked but not shown
Blackmail: murder is behind the curtain
Murder, 39 Steps, Stage Fright—murder not shown
Psycho: murder shown in montage that withholds the view of the knife touching the flesh
Torn Curtain: killing of Gromak, but murder is theatrical scene
Topaz: murder is treated poetically.
A dying woman’s dress, viewed from overhead, billows out like petals, as she falls
Frenzy: full revelation
NAMES (Male and Female Leads)
Young and Innocent:
Lady Vanishes: Austria; London
Jamaica Inn:
Rebecca: Chateau; but film begins in the city
Foreign Correspondent: NYC
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: NYC
Suspicion:
Sabotage: LA to NYC
Shadow: Santa Rosa, CA
Lifeboat: WWII water
Spellbound:
Notorious: Miami, Florida, then Rio, Brazi
Paradine Case:
Rope: NYC
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright: London
Strangers on Train: Washington DC
I Confess: Quebec
Dial M: London
Rear Window: NYC, Village, 10th Street
To Catch a Thief: French Riviera
Trouble with Harry: Small Town
Man Who Knew: Morocco, then London (couple lives in Indianapolis)
Wrong Man: NYC
Vertigo: SF
North: NYC (Manhattan, Plaza Hotel), then Dakota (Mt. Rushmore)
Psycho: Phx, then CA
The Birds: SF, Bodega Bay, CA
Marnie: London and??
Torn Curtain: Europe
Topaz: Paris; Int’l
Frenzy: London (Covent Garden)
Family Plot
PAST
The power of the dead/past on the living; the dead come back to haunt the living
Rebecca: First wife, Rebecca, only present in portrait
Shadow of the Doubt
Spellbound
Notorious
Paradine Case: the Major
Vertigo: Carlota
Psycho
The Birds
Family Plot
REALITIES: 3
H’s intent is to unmask reality and show it in triple form:
Like the 3 window blinds raised one after the other in the first shot of Rear Window
- Everyday reality/world
Immediately recognizable, serves as fixed base of his structure.
No falsehood. Verisimilitude
H does not cheat the audience; what he does is willingly diverting their attention.
Psycho: everything is clearly revealed
Until Cluzot’s Diaboloque
- World of form, and world of desire produces a reverse image.
It forces that personify the secret thoughts, mental attitudes, desires of the heroes
How Stewart’s apt appears from the other side of the courtyard
S’s apt is duplicated many times, a he mirror turned on the everyday
Third (3rd): Intellectual world, the main plank of H’s oeuvre, which connects the 3 narrative universes (J. Douchot)
SCREAM
Functions:
Release from tension for the audience
Liberation: Cry of anguish, triumph; surrender to death
Rope:
Man Who Knew: Doris Day; functional scream to the plot
Vertigo: two screams from Madeline/Judy
Psycho: Marion in shower, then Lila when she discovers the skeleton of mother in the basement
Torn Curtain: Armstrong (Paul Newman) shouts “Fire,” functional to the plot
SEA (River, Water)
Sea as element of chaos
Rainstorm, direct or indirect, cause of dramatic situationRebecca: boat, buried (flashback)
Suspicion: Atop a rock overseeing water
Lifeboat: all the movie set in the sea
Vertigo: Judy jumps into river (SF)
Marnie: She attempts suicide on pool on the boat
Frenzy: Thames River, polluted
Spellbound:
SEARCH
Function:
Pursuit of a missing person;
Disclosure of hidden personality
39 Steps
Lady Vanishes
Vertigo
North
Psycho
Family Plot: search for Rainbard heir (Arthir Adamson)
SECRETS:
Rebecca
Shadow of a Doubt: Young Charlie opens door of uncle when he is gone
Notorious
Under Capricorn:
In all, secrets related to room keys
I Confess
STAIRCASE
Staircase is quintessential device of German Expressionism
Lang, Murnau, Robert Wiener, all admired by Hitch
It’s recurrent device of H, filled with moral and theological significance
Ambiguity: ascent and descent
Attempts, achievement, regression seen as failure
Forces f right, evil (way up, way down)
H describes relationships in terms of ascent and descent along a staircase (Spoto, p. 8).
STRUCTURE
Cyclical
39 Steps:
London theater and Scottish countryside, then return to London
North:
Roger from NYC to Chicago to Mt Rushmore, and then return to NYC
Torn Curtain:
Film begins and ends aboard a ship
From Copenhagen to Berlin and Leipzig, then reversal of that journey
The cyclical journey is a journey in depth, ostensibly to dsicover secret or unravel mystery. But actually to establish hero’’s identity, or more profound level of name or job and to illuminate the significance of a relationship (and to) his life.
SUSPENSE
The savoring of the moment of suspense
Suspense delays/postpones narrative resolution, rather than propels it forward
Pure cinema: cinematic narration without dialogue
SYMMETRY
Blackmail:
Symmetry at all levels
Symmetry of overall construction; symmetry within longer segments (series of sequences linked by continuity of action); symmetry within individual sequences; symmetry within construction of individua shots; symmetry within individual frame of composition.
Family Plot:
It begins and ends at night, with a closeup of Blanche
Drugs: Mrs. Rainbird’s sleeping problems, tries to get sleeping drugs without a prescription at the pharmacy
Adamson drugging his victims into coma for abduction and release.
TELEPHONE
Extreme importance of the call, symbolized by the phone
Rear Window: Jeff sends Kelly to killer’s house, then calls him, killer calls him on the phone before arriving in person
Strangers on the Train
Psycho: sheriff calls Norman
The Birds: Melanie call her father’s publishing house to find out license plate; later, he calls Melanie when she stays at Annie’s
THEATER (Moviehouse) SETTING
Reality of illusion; illusion of reality
Murder!
39 Steps
Stage Fright
I Confess
In all, appearance vs. reality
Movie Theaters:
Sabotage
Rebecca
Saboteur
Man Who Knew: Albert Hall
THEORY
Riemer and Chabrol’s book, in 1951, claimed that the key to H’s universe is Catholicism and Jansenianism
But their approach was discredited by semiotics, psychoanalytic and feminist theories of the 70s.
Jansen: emphasis on problems of sin, guilt; relationship between virtue and grace; between subject Law. (Zezek)
Which H’s films grew in stature with repeated viewing (Marnie, Frenzy)
Which films were elevated as a result of changing critical perspective
Man Who Knew
The Birds is the one work that grows more impressive over the years
Sequential order: Marnie came after The Birds
Which of H’s films has benefited the most from the shifting tides in film theory
Rope:
This film emerged from decades of obscurity as a result of Derrida
Queer theory in D. A. Miller’s “Anal Rope.’
Strangers on Train
Thomas Hemmeter: “Twisted writing”
Feminists film critics have pointed out the limitations of the psycho-narrative to Hitch
They showed that Bellour’s use of psychoanalysis eludes the differences between male and female subjectivity
Voyeurism and fetishism are dominant codes of H’s films and the only position of subjectivity open to female
spectators is masochism (Robert Kolker, H’s America).
Thrill Pleasure
Philobatism
Compulsive thrill-seeking may lead to self-contained detachment, paranoid attributes and claustrophobia
H’s Richard Henney and Roger Thornshill
Mixture of fear, pleasure and confident hope in face of external danger (the fundamental element of all thrills).
Ocnophilia:
Compulsive clinging related to self-effacement, anxiety proneness, esp in the form of agoraphobia. (Peter Wollen I Richard Allen).
Special pleasure people obtain from roller-coaster rides, roundabouts, swings
Thrills are related to giddiness and Vertigo, high speed, exposed situations, chases
All unfamiliar or completely new forms of satisfaction
TRAIN
H’s fascination with trains as good and bad objects
Passengers are both trapped and constantly shifting POV
The outward view thru window is crucial (North)
Tension between train as claustrophobic space and train as means of escape toward liberation (p. Wollen in R.Allen, ed, Hitchcock.
Strangers: mixture of claustrophobia and movement
Mode of Transport:
A sign of passing from one world to another
A sensation in its own right
Charm of train journey
Destabilization of the world beyond the screen
We are at a standstill while the world beyond runs past
North: Intrusion of stain disrupts the safe distance
Field of vision invaded by elements that does not belong to diegetic reality, which disturbs clarity of vision is part of our eye, not part of the reality we look at (Zezek, p. 227)
Fatality
Trains, planes, cars, skis, boats, bicycles
Number 17
Young and Innocent
Lady Vanishes
39 Steps
Secret Agent
Suspicion
Saboteur
Strangers on Train
North
Victim
Young and Innocent:
Lady Vanishes: Austria; London
Jamaica Inn:
Rebecca: Chateau; but film begins in the city
Foreign Correspondent: NYC
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: NYC
Suspicion:
Sabotage: LA to NYC
Shadow: Santa Rosa, CA
Lifeboat: WWII water
Spellbound:
Notorious: Miami, Florida, then Rio, Brazi
Paradine Case:
Rope: NYC
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright: London
Strangers on Train: Washington DC
I Confess: Quebec
Dial M: London
Rear Window: NYC, Village, 10th Street
To Catch a Thief: French Riviera
Trouble with Harry: Small Town
Man Who Knew: Morocco, then London (couple lives in Indianapolis)
Wrong Man: NYC
Vertigo: SF
North: NYC (Manhattan, Plaza Hotel), then Dakota (Mt. Rushmore)
Psycho: Phx, then CA
The Birds: SF, Bodega Bay, CA
Marnie: London and??
Torn Curtain: Europe
Topaz: Paris; Int’l
Frenzy: London (Covent Garden)
Family Plot
VIOLENCE
Frenzy: The most grotesque and graphic act of violence in all of H’s films is the murder of Brenda Blaney
The new climate of freedom allowed showing physical aspects of dying, intense anguish of pain of the victim (copied)
(Levy: Cinema of Cruelty)
Rear Window: The murder and dismemberment of Thorwald’s wife occurs off-screen.
In Westerns, a fight between 2 men is demonstrated thru the whole body, with angles to stress strength and power of movement.
H—the fight is shown thru fragmentation, parts of the body (J.T. Allen)
VISION (Blindness, Light, Dream)
5 first Amer films
Rebecca: Dream (film beginning)
Foreign Correspondent: light
Suspicion: short-sighted
Shadow of doubt: dream/nightmare
Saboteur: blindness
WINDOW (DOOR)
39 Steps: window opens; knife murders actress
Rebecca: Mrs. Danvers
Rear Window
Psycho:
the beginning Janet Leigh and Gavin making love in the motel
She then hears voice
Then Albogas hears and see
WIT
H’s wit less conspicuous means for showing indifference and refusal to be engaged in acts of suffering (Tole)
H’s wit is hard and deeply ingrown; it stays below the surface
Wit is unavailable at first viewing to audiences
For H, wit has the right To assert its innocence.
WOMEN
H’s first UK films
Pleasure Garden:
showgirls are divided into, morally wholesome Patsy Brand, and Golddigger Jill Cheyne
His first US film
Rebecca: The second wife is the double of the first
Notorious and North:
Women defined by their sexuality. They turn sexuality into a form of agency
Female double agents
They sleep with the enemy In order to gain knowledge that will undermine him
Levy: but the difference between sleeping with James Mason or Claude Rains
But at the end, both women are rescued in conventional and fairytale way
Reductive conception of femininity (R. Allen)
H was master of the dichotomy in mainstream films, whereby conservatism and subversion co-exist
Man Who Knew:
copied
H assigned the woman a more passive maternal role than in the original and returned the husband to his rightful place as an active agent.
Women and Violence
Psycho and Frenzy: A shot of both women prior to the at of violence, with their heads thrown backwards
Psycho: Marion extends her bird-like neck to the shower of cascading water, eyes closed, smiling
Frenzy: Brenda her rm pinned behind her by Rush, faints as he carries her
Conditioned by ritualized animal behavior to indicate trust and vulnerability
Among animals, it marks the end of aggression
Between people, it invites trusting intimacy (J. T. Allen)
Color
Analysis of color in terms of groupings of systems of color.
Some have contrast or opposed meanings
All may overlap with one another in different way
Edward Brannigan: “The articulation of color in a Filmic System: Deux ou Trois choses,” in Dalle Vacchi and B. Price (eds) Color: The Film Reaser, pp. 170-182
Focus: Routledge Film Readers
- Allen
Half of H’s Amer films are in color, including Rope and Under Capricorn (his productions).
Use o color experimental
Rope: carefully controlled use of color
Color can be uniquely discriminated and can carry symbolic value
Red usually means warning
Colors also gain significances by ther association and contrast with other colors.
Costuming in H’s is the most privileged color index
It’s attached to character and can be calibrated to changes and development in story.
Costume of protags and extras in public spaces
Frenzy
North by Northwest
(copied to below)
First, showing the location in colorless and objectless space
Building up the elements of color design alongside the construction of mise en scene
Certain objects: lampshades and flowers within interiors become privileged bearers of color, but their color can be calibrated without undermining the design’s overall surrealism (R. Allen, p. 222).
Color in the room of G. Kaplan insipid and anonymous, creams and beiges—standards in Amer hotel
Nonexistence of its inhabitants
Midwest—Grant is framed from above standing at the crossroad
Landscape denuded denied) of signs of life and color
Beiges and grays of colorless, vacated wasteland, field of dried up corn (wasteland of America)
It evokes the degree zero reached by Grant (R. Allen, p. 128).
Cool colors—pale blue, sky blue and aquamarine
Green-lime green
Cool colors emotional detachment or distance
Cool is the domination of reason over emotion
UN bdg—image of new world order, controlled by impersonal and calculated machination
Male agents in dark blue suits, impossible to visually distinguishfrom a foe (Allen, p. 229).
WOMEN (Films, A to Z)
Young and Innocent:
Lady Vanishes: Austria; London
Jamaica Inn:
Rebecca: Chateau; but film begins in the city
Foreign Correspondent: NYC
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: NYC
Suspicion:
Sabotage: LA to NYC
Shadow: Santa Rosa, CA
Lifeboat: WWII water
Spellbound:
Notorious: Miami, Florida, then Rio, Brazi
Paradine Case:
Rope: NYC
Under Capricorn
Stage Fright: London
Strangers on Train: Washington DC
I Confess: Quebec
Dial M: London
Rear Window: NYC, Village, 10th Street
To Catch a Thief: French Riviera
Trouble with Harry: Small Town
Man Who Knew: Morocco, then London (couple lives in Indianapolis)
Wrong Man: NYC
Vertigo: SF
North: NYC (Manhattan, Plaza Hotel), then Dakota (Mt. Rushmore)
Psycho: Phx, then CA
The Birds: SF, Bodega Bay, CA
Marnie: London and??
Torn Curtain: Europe
Topaz: Paris; Int’l
Frenzy: London (Covent Garden)
Family Plot
HITCHOCK FILMS, A to Z
Individual notes
The Birds
Attacking forces have been libidinized from the outset—in the pet store
They can be read as spilling out of Tippi Hedren’s psyche
Message is ominous and overt: taming of shrew
(F. Jameson in Zezek, p. 48)
Frenzy:
The most grotesque and graphic act of violence in all of H’s films is the murder of Brenda Blaney
The new climate of freedom allowed showing physical aspects of dying, intense anguish of pain of the victim (copied)
The Lodger
The staircase in this film is constructed like the one in Psycho
A front door opens into small foyer
On the right, a staircase leading to private rooms
On the left, a long, narrow hall leads to rear kitchen
The relationship between the characts is defined in terms of the staircase
In The Lodger, it’s between the girl’s parents
Mother, worried and suspicious of the lodger emerges from the cellar underneath
(just like “the mother” in Psycho)
Mother walk to the front of the stairwell and stands paralyzed
The inability of parents to help their child. (Spoto).
Man Who Knew Too Much
copied
H assigned the woman a more passive maternal role than in the original and returned the husband to his rightful place as an active agent.
North by Northwest
It has all the mainstream appeal of Rear Window, s well as the same suave, ironic approach to its darker aspects.
Narrative is secondary.
First, showing the location in colorless and objectless space
Building up the elements of color design alongside the construction of mise en scene
Certain objects: lampshades and flowers within interiors become privileged bearers of color, but their color can be calibrated without undermining the design’s overall surrealism (R. Allen, p. 222).
Color in the room of G. Kaplan insipid and anonymous, creams and beiges—standards in Amer hotel
Nonexistence of its inhabitants
Midwest—Grant is framed from above standing at the crossroad
Landscape denuded denied) of signs of life and color
Beiges and grays of colorless, vacated wasteland, field of dried-up corn (wasteland of America)
It evokes the degree zero reached by Grant (R. Allen, p. 128).
Cool colors—pale blue, sky blue and aquamarine
Green-lime green
Cool colors emotional detachment or distance
Cool is the domination of reason over emotion
UN bdg—image of new world order, controlled by impersonal and calculated machination
Male agents in dark blue suits, impossible to visually distinguish from a foe (Allen, p. 229).
Main text is about a quest/test, trial by fear
Struggle with adversary; experience of betrayal;
Action not with images, but within images
Grant, an exec with 2 divorces, mother and bar tenders to support
He achieves the possibility of “fulfilling relationship” in marriage.
The message is pop-psychological maturity (Jameson in Zezek, p, 45)
Psycho:
Breaking taboos
Delight in skewering Amer’s sacred cows, such as virginity, cleanliness, privacy, masculinity, sex, mother love, marriage, reliance on pills, sanctity of the family,
The bathroom—unhinge audiences by showing a toilet flushing (S. Rebello).
Rear Window:
H’s subtle achievement is that he incorporates the psych darkness of his later films into one of his most mainstream and fondly remembered films.
To Catch Thief:
The colors in the flowers market scene, reds against white.
Colorfulness: artifice is calibrated in the costume ball at the end, which in narrative terms is gratuitous
VERTIGO
Madeline comes close to Scottie, stops for a moment, we see her mysterious profile.
We see only half of it; the other half could be a disgusting, disfigured face; the true vulgar face of Judy.
This shot is not from Scottie’s POV; only later there is Scottie’s subjective POV when they leave (p, x)
If it were true love, after discovering the truth Scottie should have accepted Judy more as model than Madeleine herself.
Judy was a model
Madeleine of the past was an imaginary lure, pretending to be what she was not (Judy played Madeleine)
Scottie does not love Madeleine. He tries to recreate her in Judy, changing Judy’s nature to make her resemble Madeliene (S. Zezek, p, xiii)
He does accept her, just before the rise of mother superior
