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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.