The acclaim of Vertigo as the top film of the 20th century by the British Film Institute added a new wrinkle to the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock. The master of mystery was now recognized as a master filmmaker delving into the vagaries of human nature through vivid characterization. Maxim De Winter (Rebecca) and Norman Bates (Psycho) remain more fascinating than the situations in which they find themselves. The great Hitchcock films contain richly developed characters trapped in delusions or fantasies often of their own making, but always expressing the distaff side of the director’s fantasy life. Hitchcock is probably the screen’s most subtle chameleon, underscoring his characters with his own private fantasy world.
Hitchcock uses duplicity as a subtly ambiguous tool, concealing the understated duality that often conceals his characters’ hidden motivations. The leading character in Vertigo is a fraud. The threatening spouse in Suspicion becomes helplessly benign. Notorious’ duped husband must try to kill his duplicitous spouse. In Hitchcock’s first great American film, Rebecca, the second wife’s suspicion is repudiated. In these and many Hitchcock films, the identity of the characters becomes subordinate to the powerful psychological contradictions that have long tantalized Hitchcock’s audience. Biographer Donald Spoto defines the duality in Hitchcock’s screenplays as the yin and yang of opposing conflicts within the characters themselves. The murdering uncle in Shadow of a Doubt threatens his unsuspecting niece. The most intriguing character in Strangers on a Train proposes a psychopathic bargain with his unsuspecting acquaintance. Rebecca’s malevolent Mrs. Danvers tries to maintain the illusion of a non-existing happy first marriage. Their fascination is that they always remain slightly out of reach.
Yet, in Hitchcock’s finest films, the characters remain subordinate to the director’s visual imagination and are often subjected to the elusive power of the director’s personal fantasies. The airtight conception of Hitchcock’s vision gives his films their universal allure. Hitchcock’s obsession with beautiful blondes and his furtive imagination only enhanced Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound and Notorious, while Grace Kelly would never again be as seductive as in Rear Window. Even the taciturn Eva Marie Saint achieves a new sexuality in North by Northwest. Cary Grant and Claude Rains would never be as sinister as they were in Notorious.
The magic of Hitchcock’s direction is evident in the distinctive dreamlike quality his stars brought to the screen; their elusive eroticism seems drawn from the director’s own suppressed fantasy world. Yet, if Hitchcock’s movies were no more than his personal dreams, fears and inhibitions, he would not achieve his current status as one of the screen’s great directors. Drawing deeply from the reservoir of human emotion and dreams, his films convey a universal quality which explains his undiminished popularity. Even early films such as The Lady Vanishes and 39 Steps, treasures from his early British years, have enjoyed revived recognition. If Hitchcock’s romantic dreamlike obsession with his private fantasies took an unfortunate turn when he victimized Tippi Hedren in The Birds and Marnie—because she could not show affection for a bulbous old man—we can forgive the unfortunate lapse for the sake of the cinematic result.
Currently, Hitchcock’s legacy has taken a new dimension, largely from his trio of masterpieces from the late 1950s. These films demonstrate a remarkable similarity in the development of Hitchcock’s concept of an illusionary reality independent from realism. All three films portray dominant non-existent characters. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant is forced to become the artificially created Roger Thornhill and must elude dangerous foreign agents while romancing Eva Marie Saint. He plays his non-character to perfection.
In Psycho, the audience is terrified by a murderously non-existent, long dead Mrs. Bates. But the terminally psychotic Norman has created her with vivid intensity in this most cinematically innovative entry in the Hitchcock canon.
Vertigo is in a class of its own. Madeline is an artificial creation, but the “Madeline world” described by one reviewer is so pervasive that, when James Stewart seeks to recreate her, the audience shares his anticipation of her resurrection, having literally brought back from the dead a lost beloved. The magic of this subtle masterpiece has often confused film historians who prefer to look at cinematic innovation—of which Vertigo offers little. Even the dream sequence seems artificial.
But Vertigo demonstrates once and for all that, if Hitchcock’s films were only incarnations of his own dreams and wishes, they would have had lesser appeal. As Spoto wisely pointed out, “He expressed those elusive images and half-remembered dreams in terms that moved, astounded, delighted and aroused awe from millions around the world.” Perhaps Hitchcock’s movies retain their appeal not only from their emotional universality, but from the tacit realization that reality in a great film has a life of its own. The greatest Hitchcock films contain an uncanny magnetism which challenges our sensory perceptions while enlarging our capacity to dream.
