Alfred Hitchcock is known as the “Master of Suspense” but many of his films are suffused with humor. Wes D. Gehring makes the case that many of his movies are “comic thrillers” in Hitchcock and Humor: Modes of Comedy in Twelve Defining Films. The Bell State University professor identifies dark humor even in Psycho (1960) and find hijinks as much as suspense in Hitch’s body of work.
Admittedly, some of Hitchcock’s films are entirely in earnest, especially The Wrong Man (1956) and Vertigo (1958), but as Gehring points out, even the director’s film about thrill-kill murder, Rope (1948), includes many mordant moments. The Lady Vanishes (1938) is a mystery wrapped in farce and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) is a screwball comedy with a dark undercurrent.
Gehring concludes Hitchcock and Humor with a chapter on North by Northwest (1959), a tongue-in-cheek Cold War thriller that spoofs the director’s own work. Gehring quotes the London Times review: “What would happen if you woke up one morning and found your life turning into a Hitchcock film.”
Of course, it’s no revelation to discover humor in Hitch’s movies, but Gehring sets a new bar by showing how often humor was integral to the filmmaker’s work.
