Alfred HitchcockDaniel Taylor

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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)

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.

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.