Alfred Hitchcock

1. Alfred Hitchcock Daniel Taylor

2. Biography • Born in London of August 13, 1899. • First made films in England. • Moved to Hollywood in 1940. • Golden Age was the 50’s and early 60’s. • Died April 1980 at the age of 80.

3. Innovations • Storyboarded every last detail of his films. • Established the macguffin, the wrong man, the icy blonde, the charming sociopath. • Invented the dolly zoom or Vertigo shot. • Rope is 10 invisible edits to make it look like one shot.

4. My Paper: Topic • My paper’s topic is an attempt to deconstruct the notion that Hitchcock was a misogynist and instead intimate that mothers were the most powerful characters in his films. • I used several primary sources and secondary sources to make my argument.

5. My Paper: Thesis • Even though Hitchcock is known for showing women as subservient victims of men, nature, or fate, films like Notorious, Psycho, and Strangers on a Train depict men becoming subservient victims of their own mothers. • My paper is broken down into first a deconstruction of the former and than an argument of the latter.

6. Why a Misogynist? • He tortured his actresses. • Terrible things happened to his female characters on screen. • Nicholas Haeffner said of Hitchcock, “(He) quoted the advice of nineteenth century dramatist Victorien Sardou whose formula for successful drama was ‘torture the women’” (Haeffner 67)

7. Mamas Boy • Mothers were always the most controlling characters. • In Notorious and Psycho the “mothers” of the male characters control them. • Hitchcock uses young female leads in mother surrogate roles.

8. Mama’s Boy • Author Paul Gordon exclaims, “Hitchcock’s misogynistic need to destroy the “icy self-possession” of the ideal Hitchcock woman, a view which… fails to account for the films’ clear mother complex underlying the misogyny” (Gordon 29)

9. Conclusion • After all my research I found that Mother figures are evident in places I would have never expected: Midge in Vertigo, Lisa Fremont in Rear Window. • In my conclusion I state that all Hitch’s leading men were suffocated by their desire to please some form of Mother.

10. Conclusion • I cite Psycho as the definitive film when it comes to deconstructing Hitchcock’s legacy as a woman hater. • The evidence clearly shows that Hitchcock was enthralled by the power of women as mothers and did not harbor ideas of female inferiority.