Hitchcock’s Motifs Hitchcock’s Motifs IN TRANSITION FILM CULTURE FILM CULTURE Amsterdam University Press Amsterdam University Press M I C H A E L WA L K E R M I C H A E L WA L K E R Hitchcock ’ s Motifs Hitchcock ’ s Motifs Michael Walker Cover illustration: (front) To Catch a Thief : Food motif. The picnic: Francie (Grace Kelly) and Robie (Cary Grant share a chicken. (back) poster for To Catch a Thief Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Layout: japes , Amsterdam isbn (paperback) isbn (hardcover) nur © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or trans- mitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. For Robin Wood, not only a seminal Hitchcock critic, but also a friend Contents Acknowledgements 13 Introduction 15 Part I Hitchcock, Motifs and Melodrama Introduction 25 Three motifs 26 Home movies Cigarette case/lighter Milk Melodrama and Hitchcock ’ s motifs 30 An elaborated motif: the Bed Scene in Rebecca and Marnie 35 A melodramatic motif: hands 43 Diagrammatic representations 46 Overview of the key motifs 50 Part II The Key Motifs BED SCENE 57 Couples and beds Beds and the police BLONDES AND BRUNETTES 69 Blondes versus brunettes Blond allure/blond iconography Blondes, brunettes and violence Blondes, brunettes and the police CAMEO APPEARANCES 87 Cameos and the police CHILDREN 98 Children ’ s cameos Family members Children and violence Children and the police CONFINED SPACES 111 Bathrooms and washrooms Confinement and concealment Cages and bars: fears of imprisonment Washrooms and the police THE CORPSE 123 The heroines The heroes The villains Corpses and the police DOGS AND CATS 142 Dogs and the police DOUBLES 146 Doubles and the police ENDINGS AND THE POLICE 154 ENTRY THROUGH A WINDOW 158 Entry through a window and the police EXHIBITIONISM / VOYEURISM / THE LOOK 164 EXHIBITIONISM / VOYEURISM SPY FILMS / THE LOOK Exhibitionism, voyeurism and the police FOOD AND MEALS 179 Food and marriage Food and sex Food and murder 8 Hitchcock ’ s Motifs Food and guilt Chickens and eggs Table talk and fascism Food and the police GUILT AND CONFESSION 201 Catholic overtones Guilt and Hitchcock ’ s villains Transference of guilt Guilt, confession and the police HANDCUFFS AND BONDAGE 214 HANDS 220 Male hands/female hands Held wrists Damaged hands Holding hands Hands and the police HEIGHTS AND FALLING 238 Heights, falling and the police HOMOSEXUALITY 248 Critical positions Gay undercurrents Espionage and the look Ivor Novello Homosexuality and the police JEWELLERY 262 Greed Status Female desire Female beauty/male power Male murderousness Jewellery and the police KEYS AND HANDBAGS 269 KEYS Keys and handbags Contents 9 HANDBAGS Handbags and keys Keys, handbags and the police LIGHT(S) 286 Vampires and blinding Murder and homosexuality Lights and the police THE MACGUFFIN 296 The MacGuffin and the police MOTHERS AND HOUSES 307 Mothers and the police PORTRAITS, PAINTINGS AND PAINTERS 319 PORTRAITS PAINTINGS Modern art PAINTERS Portraits, paintings and the police PUBLIC DISTURBANCES 335 Public disturbances and the police SPECTACLES 344 Spectacles and the police STAIRCASES 350 Hitchcockian levels Political variations Sinister staircases Freudian overtones Couples and staircases Staircases and the police TRAINS AND BOATS / PLANES AND BUSES 373 TRAINS BOATS PLANES BUSES 10 Hitchcock ’ s Motifs Trains and boats and the police WATER AND RAIN 388 WATER RAIN Water and the police Appendix I: TV Episodes 401 BED SCENE CHILDREN CONFINED SPACES THE CORPSE DOUBLES FOOD AND MURDER / ENDINGS AND THE POLICE LIGHTS BOATS Appendix II: Articles on Hitchcock ’ s motifs 416 Appendix III: Definitions 418 Diegesis Point-of-view editing References 421 Filmography 431 List of illustrations 463 Index of Hitchcock ’ s films and their motifs 467 General Index 481 Contents 11 Acknowledgements Hitchcock ’ s Motifs has been researched and written over many years, expanding in the process from an essay to a book. I would like to thank first those who read drafts and sections during the early stages, and who provided helpful and encouraging feedback: the late Bob Baker, Charles Barr, Peter Evans, Ed Gallafent, Derek Owen, Neil Sinyard, Keith Withall and Robin Wood. As the project developed, Sheldon Hall, Ken Mogg, John Oliver and Victor Perkins all helped track down copies of the rarer films/TV episodes; Richard Lippe sup- plied some vital stills. Ken Mogg was also invaluable in answering factual ques- tions. I am especially indebted to Richard Chatten, who checked the filmogra- phy with great care, and Tony Brereton, who was an assiduous arbiter of my prose style. Thomas Elsaesser then provided encouragement and very useful feedback as the book neared completion. For more specific help, I would like to thank Stella Bruzzi, who tutored me on the nuances of hair colour and styling for ‘ Blondes and brunettes ’ , Susan Smith, who sent me the chapter on ‘ Hitchcock and Food ’ from her PhD, Sarah Street, who supplied me with a copy of her article on ‘ Hitchcockian Haberdashery ’ , and two of my sisters: Jenny Winter, who translated Hartmut Redottée ’ s article on Hitchcock ’ s motifs from the German, and Susie Wardell, who produced the book ’ s diagrams in a professional manner. Bob Quaif advised me on the subtle- ties of the soundtrack of Rear Window ; my nephew Keith Winter provided unfailing technical support for any computer problems. I watched and discussed many of the films over the years with Stephen Blumenthal and Natasha Broad, and I am sure that some of their insights will have found their way into the text. Likewise, generations of students on the FEDAS Course at Hounslow Borough College (latterly West Thames College) and on the Media Arts Course at Royal Holloway, University of London, have contributed to my understanding of film in general and Hitchcock in particular. Finally, I am grateful above all to Leighton Grist. Not only have his ideas on Hitchcock helped shape my own, but he has read (almost) every word of the text, and been exacting in his criticism of anything that he felt was not as clear as it should be. Introduction A leitmotif can be understood not as literary technique, but as the expression of an obsession. (Klaus Theweleit: Male Fantasies Volume : ) This book examines Alfred Hitchcock ’ s work through his recurring motifs. Mo- tifs in general are a neglected area of Film Studies. Although the decade by decade multi-volume American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States (see Munden ; Krafsur ; Hanson , & ) includes a ‘ Subject Index ’ for each decade, and several film guides have either a ‘ Category Index ’ or a ‘ General Subject Index ’ – all of which include motifs – these are no more than listings of the films in which a specific feature occurs. Actual discussions of motifs in the cinema are rare, and there is only one pub- lication in this area which I have found useful to this project and would like to acknowledge at the outset: Michel Cieutat ’ s two-volume Les grands thèmes du cinéma américain ( & ). Despite the title, Cieutat includes motifs as well as themes, and he looks at the ways in which recurring elements in Hollywood films reveal (sometimes hidden) aspects of the culture which produced them. Nevertheless – to anticipate one of my arguments – whenever Cieutat ’ s cate- gories overlap with those in Hitchcock ’ s films, there is a clash: Hitchcock ’ s motifs do not fit the general pattern: see, for example, Milk in Part I and STAIR- CASES in Part II. I have had a substantive interest in motifs in the cinema for many years. This book arose out of my research. Although it is confined to Hitchcock ’ s films, it is also informed by an awareness of the functioning of motifs in films generally. In cases where one of the Hitchcock motifs has resonances with examples else- where, I discuss the similarities and differences. My response to the not unrea- sonable question: ‘ why another book on Hitchcock? ’ would be that (a) this as- pect of his films has been surprisingly ignored and (b) approaching Hitchcock ’ s films from the point of view of his recurring motifs offers a different slant on his work, one which I hope will reveal new insights. My project here is not without precedent: there was an article on Hitchcock ’ s motifs published in Cahiers du Cinéma as long ago as . Written by Philippe Demonsablon and entitled Lexique mythologique pour l ’ oeuvre de Hitchcock (Demonsablon : - & - ), this considered twenty recurring motifs in Hitchcock ’ s films up to The Man who Knew Too Much ( ): for details, see Appendix II. But this was in the days when Sight and Sound – as the key repre- sentative of British film criticism of the period – considered the ideas of these French critics to be slightly batty, as is shown by Richard Roud ’ s survey of their criticism in ‘ The French Line ’ (Roud : - ). After quoting an admittedly rather mystical passage from Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol ’ s Hitchcock ( ), Roud adds, ‘ If this were not enough, Cahiers once devoted fourteen pages to a thematic index of objects in Hitchcock ’ s films: glasses, throats, clocks, cats, eyes, knives, keys ...’ (Roud : ). Although he has invented the throats, clocks and eyes, he has grasped the principle: they would not have been out of place. Roud was fighting a rearguard action; it was Cahiers du Cinéma ’ s enthusiasm for Hitchcock as auteur which prevailed, and which spread rapidly throughout the cinéphile world. No other film director has prompted so many books and articles on his work: the annotated bibliography in Jane Sloan ’ s Alfred Hitchcock: a Filmography and Bibliography ( ) has some separate entries – up to , and excluding contemporary reviews – and runs to almost two hundred pages. With such a wealth of material, one would have anticipated some refer- ence to further articles on Hitchcock ’ s motifs. Indeed, this seemed such an ob- vious area for scholarship that, in a short piece on Hitchcock for Film Dope in , I was moved to speculate: even now, one has visions of a student somewhere painstakingly working on Hitch ’ s ‘ master-code ’ , under such headings as false arrest, voyeurism, mother figures, blondes versus brunettes, the law, guilt and confession, pursuit, public disturbances, murder weapons, staircases, falls, birds, keys etc., each with its sub-divisions and variations. (Walker, M. a: ) But, although there have been articles on Hitchcock ’ s themes, and a few on in- dividual motifs, to my knowledge not until was one published (in Ger- man) on Hitchcock ’ s motifs in general: Hartmut W. Redottée: Leid-Motive: Das Universum des Alfred Hitchcock (Redottée : - ). This book takes up the project I outlined in and looks in detail at the director ’ s motifs. In Hitchcock ’ s Films Revisited , Robin Wood looks at one area of the ‘ master- code ’ : Hitchcock ’ s ‘ plot formations ’ (Wood : - ). He discusses five re- curring stories in the films: those of the falsely accused man; the guilty woman; the psychopath; the spy intrigue; the marriage. In part, I conceived Hitchcock ’ s Motifs as an albeit somewhat expanded complement to this chapter. Robin Wood looks at Hitchcock ’ s most significant plots; this book returns to the spirit of the original Cahiers lexicon and focuses on those recurring elements in Hitchcock which, for the most part, one would call motifs. Here I am following Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism (Frye : - ) and taking the term 16 Hitchcock ’ s Motifs motif from the more familiar musical term leitmotif , or ‘ leading motif ’ . But, as well as amending and extending the original Cahiers du Cinéma categories, I have also incorporated a few examples which should more properly be termed themes, e.g. EXHIBITIONISM / VOYEURISM / THE LOOK, GUILT AND CON- FESSION and HOMOSEXUALITY , which I included because I was dissatisfied with the discussions of them elsewhere. In context, I have referred to these as themes, but in the book generally, reversing the usual practice, these few themes are subsumed under the general rubric of motifs, and ‘ motifs ’ should be read as short for ‘ themes and motifs ’ In Hitchcock – The Murderous Gaze , William Rothman refers en passant to sev- eral Hitchcock motifs (Rothman ). But his examples are for the most part recurring visual motifs, e.g. the parallel vertical lines ‘ //// ’ which he traces throughout Hitchcock ’ s work: he introduces this motif on page . In a more recent article, Rothman has helpfully summarised the Hitchcock motifs which he cites throughout his book: ‘ curtain raisings ’ ; ‘ eclipses ’ ; ‘ tunnel shots ’ ; white flashes; frames-within-frames; pro- file shots; symbolically charged objects (e.g., lamps, staircases, birds); symbolically charged colours (red, white, blue-green, brown) (Rothman : ) Only the symbolically charged objects overlap with my project. This is not to say that visual motifs are not equally important to Hitchcock ’ s work, and one could cite others: e.g. circles and spirals, the colour yellow. But, for reasons of space, I have excluded visual motifs: they could indeed form the subject of an- other book. And so, for example, LIGHT(S) in this book refers to a diegetic light or lights, i.e. light sources within the film ’ s narrative world, such as light bulbs, candles and the sun, rather than to a film ’ s lighting scheme ( Ø APPENDIX III for a fuller definition of diegetic). Since I am also making a distinction between themes and motifs, I should clarify what I mean. Motifs are recurring elements of a certain kind in a narra- tive or a series of narratives: in Hitchcock ’ s case they include objects (e.g. keys), types of character (e.g. mothers), settings (e.g. trains), actions (e.g. entrances through a window) and events (e.g. public disturbances). They are usually de- noted by concrete nouns, but occasionally by a gerund, e.g. falling. A theme is more abstract: it incorporates a point of view and implies that the film is saying something about this matter. Themes are denoted by abstract nouns. However, because of the complexity and density of Hitchcock ’ s work, I would argue that there is in practice little or no functional difference between themes and motifs in his films. A theme in any work is necessarily articulated, inflected in a certain way. Or, from the point of view of the critic: ‘ We apprehend the theme by inference – it is the rationale of the images and sym- Introduction 17 bols (i.e. motifs) ’ (Sage : ). But I would say the same of Hitchcock ’ s mo- tifs: they are not simply recurring elements, but elements which are articulated and recur in patterns of meaning. The significance of these patterns may then be critically inferred: it is my purpose here to investigate and explicate them. As will be apparent, and as is the common practice in auteur studies, I am attributing the ways in which the individual motifs are inflected in the films to Hitchcock himself. Of course, some of the specific examples will have originated elsewhere, and of course there may be other directors – or, indeed, literary authors – whose work shows similar inflections of a given motif. Collectively, however, they are Hitchcock ’ s motifs: they provide another facet to his more familiar themes and preoccupations; one whose significance only fully emerges when the examples are considered in toto. In approaching his work from this point of view, my underlying premise is that little (nothing?) in his films is acci- dental, and so if he chooses, for example, to include a scene in or on a bed in most of his films, there will, consciously or unconsciously, be a purpose and pattern to this. Occasionally, a particular manifestation of a motif might seem to be merely incidental, but I would argue that this is rare. I hope that the exam- ples themselves will provide the evidence to support this argument. The interaction of an artist with his or her culture can be a complex and diffi- cult one; this is perhaps especially so with an artist as sophisticated as Hitch- cock. Investigating Hitchcock ’ s films through their motifs – particularly in the cases where the motifs are widespread in other works – thus becomes in part an exploration of Hitchcock ’ s relationship to his culture. As with motifs in films generally, some of the examples discussed here function in a way which seems quite unconscious. An exploration of their meanings should thus also reveal something of the ‘ Hitchcockian unconscious ’ , the hidden/unconscious patterns underlying his works. I should stress that the concept of the Hitchcockian un- conscious is not meant to refer to the psychology of Hitchcock himself, but to a feature of his films: it arises, again, from the complex interaction of Hitchcock the artist with his culture. In many respects, Hitchcock is an elusive figure: critics have noted how guarded he usually sounds in interviews. But the films are a different matter: they offer themselves as subjects for analysis. A few words about the structure of the book. Part I constitutes a general dis- cussion of the significance and meaning of motifs, with selected examples. The theoretical material here is designed to underpin and contextualise the discus- sions of the individual motifs. The examples in Part I have been selected to illus- trate aspects of the theoretical arguments, but also to probe more deeply into the whole issue of Hitchcock ’ s motifs by looking at a small number of instances of a given motif in detail. The examples have also been chosen to illustrate two basic points I wish to make about Hitchcock ’ s use of motifs. First, that his ar- ticulation of a given motif tends to be more sophisticated (and/or distinctive) 18 Hitchcock ’ s Motifs than the norm. Second, that there are Hitchcock films in which a motif is woven into the narrative to such an extent that one can use the motif itself as a starting point to investigate the film ’ s concerns. All this material is in turn designed to explore the issue of why an investigation of the motifs in Hitchcock ’ s work in particular is so rewarding. Part II constitutes an alphabetical listing of what I have termed the Key Mo- tifs. These are all elements which occur in a substantial number of films, rather than just a few. Some of the categories will be familiar from the Hitchcock litera- ture; others less so. I have necessarily been selective, but I hope that no signifi- cant motifs have been overlooked. Where I have excluded motifs cited by Demonsablon – and indeed a couple on my own list – this is because I decided that they were ultimately less important to Hitchcock ’ s work overall than those that I have included. One example, the Police, is covered in a differ- ent manner from the rest. There are two motifs – ENDINGS AND THE POLICE and HANDCUFFS AND BONDAGE – in which the police feature throughout the discussions. Otherwise, their special place in Hitchcock ’ s cinema is recorded in a note at the end of each motif which cites their specific contributions to that particular motif. I have also sought to be comprehensive with regard to the films. Although, inevitably, some titles crop up frequently, some rarely, and the majority in be- tween, each of Hitchcock ’ s fifty-two extant feature films as director has a num- ber of entries. In two motifs, PAINTERS and STAIRCASES, I also refer to a film Hitchcock scripted and designed, The Blackguard (Graham Cutts, ). In addition, Appendix I looks at nine TV episodes Hitchcock directed which in- clude a significant example of one of the key motifs. The spread of the motifs across Hitchcock ’ s whole oeuvre is in fact a strong measure of his consistency as auteur. Whilst there may be a shift in the prominence or inflection of a motif between his British and Hollywood films, none of those discussed in Part II is confined to only one of the periods. For reference purposes, Appendix II lists the motifs covered in the original article by Philippe Demonsablon and the recent one by Hartmut W. Redottée, together with brief comments. It also lists the themes and motifs included in Thomas Leitch ’ s The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock ( ). For published arti- cles on individual motifs, the reader is referred to Jane Sloan ’ s excellent biblio- graphy index: Sloan : - . Finally, in Appendix III I define two techni- cal terms used throughout the book which could perhaps prove troublesome: diegesis and point-of-view editing. I should like to acknowledge a general indebtedness to the writings of Robin Wood. One manifestation of this is my adoption of his notion of the ‘ chaos world ’ to specify the world of threat and disorder into which Hitchcock ’ s char- acters are almost invariably plunged. Underlying the mundane, everyday Introduction 19