As a filmmaker, whose individual style and complete control over all elements of production, Alfred Hitchcock implied a great deal in the motion pictures that he made. Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite subject was the superficial placidity of American life, whose clean, bright surfaces disguised the most shockingly moral, political, psychological and sexual aberrations. For Hitchcock, the most striking, funny, and terrifying quality of American life was its confidence in its sheer ordinariness. Beneath the surface, ordinary people and normal life were always ‘bent’ for Hitchcock. Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window contained a complicated social and psychological question beneath it.
The main character L.B. Jeffries (Jeff) is more turned on
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After Norman is physically attracted to Marion, he feels guilty for betraying his alter ego who is that of his mother, whom I would label as Norma.
Responding to her guilt, Marion decides to return the stolen money. Responding to the guilt of betraying Norma, this alter ego of Norman’s murders Marion.
Given that Norman Bates takes on the identity of his mother in response to a strange attachment that he has to her, as Norman himself says, “a boy’s best friend is his mother,” and that his mother is his “trap” that he “was born into,” it appears that Hitchcock’s lifelong interest in Freudian psychology is very intense in that Norman Bates had an Oedipus complex. If this is true, Psycho contains the emasculation of Norman at the hands of a woman, who happens to be his mother. The idea that Norman Bates remained in love with his mother and that Marion has the power to provoke this pathology, Psycho is another example of a female having power over a man, or a “boy”—in the case of Norman Bates.
Because Alfred Hitchcock implied a great deal in his films, his films may have implied a great deal about himself. If this is true, Alfred Hitchcock had a cryptic way of expressing who he
{ Hitchcock never explicitly referred to or mentioned developments of the period or the ongoing political machinations that made daily news; and while he hardly stove to substantiate David Lehman’s claim for the overriding theme in Hitchcock’s America, that “paranoia is sometimes a reasonable response to events in a world of menace” (qtd in Pomerance 12). As pointed out by Marshall Deutelbaum Hitchcock’s films were diligently faithful in their representation of the look and style of American everyday reality and it repeatedly focused on the
Rear Window effectively demonstrates Hitchcock’s strong qualities as an author. The writer for Rear Window is not Hitchcock, and yet there are clearly many motifs and themes present which are well known for being used by Hitchcock. He is not merely following instructions on how to make the movie; he is providing his own creative adjustments. Now we will address a few of these from the film. First, drawing parallels between characters with a difference, usually a negative one, is a repeated concept in Hitchcock films.
...ormation of novel to film, sees Hitchcock’s responsibility as auteur. Suggesting Hitchcock as ‘creator’, attributes to Vertigo’s “perfection” (Wood, p.129) as Wood argues. Stylistic features known classically to Alfred Hitchcock movies is also what defines Hitchcock as a classic auteur, his style generates a cinematic effect which mixes effectively with his use of suspense. In returning to Cook’s discussion, she references Andrew Sarris, who argues that the “history of American cinema could be written in terms of its great directors,” (Cook, p. 411) showing the legitimacy of authorship in popular American cinema. Ultimately Cook goes on to address the changes in authorship from the 1950’s until today, featuring developments in authorship within Cinema. Overall, both Cook and Wood presented a balanced discussion on the legitimacy of Alfred Hitchcock’s auteur status.
Rear Window and the works of Hopper are both required with confinement. Disregarding its blended utilize land setting, Early Sunday Morning does not pass on a warm, fluffy feeling of group. In like manner, in Rear Window, the inhabitants of the lofts are confined from each other. Apartment Houses is additionally for the most part viewed as another antecedent to Rear Window. Large portions of Hopper's night settings portray scenes from New York City and Night Windows is no special case. The lady in this work of art is totally unconscious of the stage she is on and the front line situate its eyewitness involves. Its semi-sexual story is resounded in Rear Window, and it catches strikingly the experience of living in New York: the a large number
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a thrilling film filled with mystery and suspense. However, Hitchcock left many unsolved issues at the end of this film. In contrast, when comparing Vertigo to more recent films of similar genre’, mysteries are usually always solved and thoroughly explained by the end of the film. Ironically, Hitchcock’s failure to explain everything to the audience in Vertigo is one of the film’s best attributes. This lack of knowledge allows the viewer to use their own imagination and speculate as to what might or might not have become of certain characters.
The human body and mind are the most complex and intricate tools known to man. The connection between the two are remarkable, the way body feels pain and the mind is able to understand from where and how the pain is being formed, the way the body lags and drops when the mind does not have enough sleep and rest. Most curiously, it is the way our body and mind speak to each other without really knowing. It is the uncomfortable feeling in your chest, the tenseness of your shoulders and the goose-bumps on your arms that are the very basics of human intuition. Intuition is knowing something without having a logical or reasonable explanation to follow the feeling. But it is when our intuition overcomes our ability to think that we become paranoid; constantly looking over our shoulders, noticing people and objects that were never noticed before, and having this retching feeling that someone is out to get you. Paranoia is a thought process where anxiety and fear accumulate to the point where the person suffers from irritation and delusions. It is often developed through an inner guilty conscience which threatens the self. It is that exact tingling sensation in your stomach, the tightness in your throat and the eerie feeling that you are being watched that makes James and Hitchcock's pieces realistically fantastical. The alternate worlds illustrated in these pieces are not of those of dreams and fairy tales, nor those people superheroes or chimeras, but a realist world, where the minds of the characters are exposed and the only source of reliability. James depicts a young woman who struggles to be a heroine for her wards, only to be torn between the lines of sanity as she questions the existence of two ghosts, while Hitchcock’s psycho can ...
As the credits roll we see the blinds of a three-pane window slowly being lifted up, after they finish the camera moves forward revealing to our gaze the reality on the other side of the open window. It faces the back of many other buildings, the courtyard they enclose, and a sliver view of the backstreet. More importantly, it faces many other windows just like it. Behind each one of those there are people, going about their day, doing mundane tasks, unaware of being observed. In his 1954 movie “Rear Window” Alfred Hitchcock invites us to engage in the guilt free observation of the lives of others. The main character, photographer L. B. Jefferies, is home stuck with a broken leg encased in a cast that goes all the way to his hip, providing the perfect excuse for him to amuse himself in this hot Manhattan summer by engaging in the seemly harmless act of looking into the many windows he can see from his back apartment. Casual, harmless, voyeurism has been part of the human behavior for ages but in the sixty years since the movie was released it has gained increasing traction. Reality television, Movies, TV shows, YouTube, blogging, Instagram and Facebook are examples of modern tools that allow us to engage in the observation of others while remaining protectively hidden from their returning gaze. In its essence the casual voyeuristic actions we engage in while observing others when using these new media tools follows the same pattern of behavior described in the movie, with the same positive and negative consequences. Casual voyeurism distinguishes itself from pathological voyeurism, which is characterized by a preference in obtaining sexual gratification only from spying others, by the removal of the sexual component from the equat...
As the paradigm in which this curiosity is exposed inhabit the human being, that voyeurism that uncounted of us have inside. Hitchcock is able to use this element to catch the spectator, building a devilish and fascinating tale of suspense set in a microcosm. In which there reflects the intimate and daily life of the current man, where the protagonist observes from his window. The viewer sees what Jeff (the protagonist) observes, has the sensation of being the protagonist, observing through his window.
We start to see Norma showing signs of borderline personality disorder (BPD) when she meets Deputy Zack Shelby played by actor Mike Vogel, and Sheriff Alex Romero played by actor Nestor Carbonell, who investigated the murder of Keith Summers. But it was Zack Shelby who expressed that he had feelings for Norma and they quickly began their dangerously intense affair. Norman isn’t very fond of Zack Shelby and discover...
Stam, Robert & Pearson, Robertson., ‘Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Refluxivity and the Critique of Voyeurism’ in Deutelbaum, Marshall & Poague, Leland A. ed., A Hitchcock Reader (John Wiley & Sons: 2009).
Hitchcock has characteristics as an auteur that is apparent in most of his films, as well as this one.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer. Alan Hitchcock was one of the few people in his time to pioneer different techniques in the genre of suspense and psychological films. He was a successful director in British cinema especially in silent films and early talkies; he was one of the most celebrated movie directors in Britain at the time. Alfred Hitchcock was the son of East End greengrocer William Hitchcock and his wife, Emma Jane (Whelan). He was raised as a strict Catholic and attended Saint Ignatius College. His interest in movies is said to have began during his years at college as he frequently visited the cinema and read alot US trade journals.
This paper has attempted to investigate the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock blended conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy. It first looked at the opening scenes of the film in which the two conventions were introdruced. It then went on to analyse the film with the aid of Robin Wood's article Ideology, Genre, Auteur. From these two forms we can see that film noir and small town comedy were used as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.
Norman’s mind housed two personalities, his and his mother’s. After his father had died, Norman and his mother had lived “as if there was no one else in the world.” A few years later, Norman’s mother met a man that she planned to marry. Driven with jealousy, Norman murdered both the man and his mother because he had felt replaced. The guilt ate him up and caused him to pretend that his mother was still alive. In order to do this, half of him became his mother. Just as Norman was jealous of any man who came near his mother, the mother half of Norman was also jealous of anyone that aroused Norman himself. Therefore, when Marion came to stay at the Bates Motel, owned by Norman, he was attracted to her, and his attraction spurred the mother half of him to become jealous and murder Marion. Sometimes Norman would dress up as his mother when reality came too close and threatened his illusion. Since his mind was housing two personalities, there was a battle, and eventually his mother won and completely took over Norman. Norman was gone, and his mother has fully taken over (Psycho). The viewers realize that Norman Bates never meant to hurt anyone. It was his jealous emotions stemming from his mother that caused him to murder Marion. In Norman’s case, his mental illness was to blame for his vile crime. Through this portrayal, the viewers are more likely to view mental illnesses negatively. Because Norman’s
When looking at the works of Alfred Hitchcock there are many recurring themes. Wrong man, classic Hitchcock villains, and the use of staircases are just three of the many attributes you see when watching a Hitchcock film. My favorite, however, would have to be Hitchcock’s portrayal of the mother. Whether she is there for comic relief as we see in Shadow of a Doubt, or as the root of all evil as you see in Strangers on a Train and Notorious, the mothers he creates are far from ordinary. Either their naïve nature or pure hated for others help to link these movies to one another.