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Warning! This article reveals significant plot details of many Hitchcock films, especially Psycho, and including Rear Window and Shadow of a Doubt. Do not read if you do not wish to learn the endings of these works. It also assumes a knowledge of the plot of Psycho, so stay away if you haven't seen it! Auteur criticism: Alfred Hitchcock A Hitchcock film is, to one familiar with Hitchcock films, almost immediately recognizable as a Hitchcock film. The question is, why? What makes a Hitchcock film a Hitchcock film? Obviously, they are suspenseful, mysterious, and thrilling (I believe he only made one pure comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 1941). But many directors make thrillers. There must be other things the set apart a Hitchcock film. Hitchcock has many favorite themes which can be found running through nearly all of his films: the "wrong man" syndrome (one film is even called The Wrong Man [1957]), voyeurism, sexual tension, and psychology. It also bears mentioning that Hitchcock never considered himself to be a director of mysteries. He said that in mysteries, the audience doesn't know who committed the crime. In his movies, he tells the audience up front who did it, and then lets them squirm. Shadow of a Doubt is the most obvious example of this, but many others work as well. If we don't know immediately who the killer is, we generally have a good idea, and clues in Hitchcock films are rarely red herrings. Suspense is built not because we do not know the answer to the mystery, but because we do. The wrong man theme can be found in films from The 39 Steps (1935) to North by Northwest (1959), and beyond, in one form or another. The conventional formula is that someone committed a crime, but the police wrongfully accuse someone innocent, who then has to run from the police while trying to find the real perpetrator. Hitchcock used this formula several times, but he was rarely conventional, and at times the theme shows up in different ways. In Vertigo (1958), for example, the police believe Madeleine has committed suicide, when in reality that was elaborate ruse. The real killer is never actually caught. The extreme example of the voyeuristic theme is Rear Window (1954), where Jimmy Stewart spends the whole movie peeking at his neighbors. Hitchcock is making a very intentional and obvious point here that is present in his other films, though in more subtle ways. Stewart, watching out his back window from a wheelchair, is unable to move much on his own, limiting himself to the one room, the one vantage point. Being handicapped for the time being, he is also unable to do anything directly to or for his neighbors. Even his attempt to stop Miss Lonelyhearts from committing suicide is unsuccessful, for someone else reaches her first. His position is much like that of our own, as cinema-goers. We cannot change our vantage point unless someone (the director) lets us. We cannot do anything for or to the people on screen. By reducing Stewart to our helplessness, Hitchcock makes us aware of it and we feel even more tense and worried than before. Anyway, getting a bit long-winded there (Rear Window is my favorite Hitchcock film…). Rear Window is not the only place voyeurism shows up. The next best example is probably Vertigo — Scotty Ferguson (Stewart again) spends about the first quarter of the movie following Madeleine (Kim Novak) around, unseen by her, yet slowly becoming more and more entranced by her. In the last quarter, he tries to remake Judy (also Novak) into the image that he gained of Madeleine through his voyeuristic tailings. We also are reminded that we are watching things that no-one should be seeing in scenes like the murder in Stranger on a Train, which we see reflected in the victim's broken glasses. An even more macabre voyeurism appears in Frenzy, where the camera angles on the dead women's bodies force us to identify with the psychopathic murderer. Page last updated 8/1/04. |
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