Hitchcock's Motifs (Film Culture in Transition)
Michael Walker
Language: English
Pages: 512
ISBN: 9053567720
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Combing through all fifty-two extant feature films and representative episodes from Hitchcock’s television series, Walker traces over forty motifs that emerge in recurring objects, settings, character-types, and events. Whether the loaded meaning of staircases, the symbolic status of keys and handbags, homoeroticism, guilt and confession, or the role of art, Walker analyzes such elements to reveal a complex web of cross-references in Hitchcock’s art. He also gives full attention to the broader social contexts in which the motifs and themes are played out, arguing that these interwoven elements add new and richer depths to Hitchcock’s oeuvre. An invaluable, encyclopedic resource for the scholar and fan, Hitchcock’s Motifs is a fascinating study of one of the best-known and most admired film directors in history.
L'avventura (BFI Film Classics)
The Big Heat (BFI Film Classics)
Seven (BFI Modern Classics 1999)
Queen Christina (BFI Film Classics)
brunette: whore – but the values are reversed, so that it is the voluptuous brunette who is ‘good’ and the icy blonde who is ‘bad’. For Hitchcock … the blonde is reprehensible not because of what she does but because of what she withholds: love, sex, trust. She must be punished, her complacency shattered; and so he submits his heroines to excruciating ordeals, long trips through terror in which they may be raped, violated by birds, killed. The plot itself becomes a mechanism for destroying their
child (Ø DOUBLES). On this reading, the murder arises out of Ben’s unconscious; another reason for his hands being stained with guilt. This links with the moment in Strangers on a Train when Bruno hands Guy Miriam’s cracked spectacles. Bruno carried out Miriam’s murder for Guy, and now his gesture signals Guy’s own responsibility in Miriam’s death. Guy’s hands, too, are symbolically ‘stained’ by association with a corpse. 138 Hitchcock’s Motifs Fig. . Still: The Trouble with Harry: the
focus on Tony’s gaze emphasises that it is he who is in charge, guiding the investigation the way he wants. Each of Tony’s lies in this scene contributes to his framing of Margot, and Hubbard swallows them all. In Blackmail, the scene with the police at the corpse swings in a completely different direction. On this occasion, the heroine Alice is responsible for the THE CORPSE 141 killing, albeit in self-defence, and the policeman Frank is her boyfriend. When Frank recognises the corpse as
Jeff is quick to realise the implication: that Thorwald himself killed the dog. This reawakens his suspicions, and he and Lisa move on to the decisive stage of their investigation. In short, it is dog murder that brings about the villain’s downfall. And one is pleased to note that, in the film’s coda, the wife is training a new dog to use the basket descent. The dog in Suspicion functions in a more subtle way. My position on the film is that Johnnie is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, quite
resists Rasi’s suggestion that they walk downstairs and insists that she be rescued. This starts a squabble between the men over who should rescue her, and Rasi is ignominiously pulled to and fro as they argue over the matter. The conflict is only resolved when she submits to Leopold’s demand and allows him to carry her down the ladder. The indignity of this – she protests that it would be safer if she climbed down – is then compounded when her skirt catches on the ladder and is torn off. Again