Was Hitchcock a creep?

[Dis]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Well, you apparantly have no problem with it.

A director who spends an hour of a film slowly and mercilessly dragging a woman through humiliation to her death, and clearly enjoys the process, is a creep in my book.

It's been a very long time since I seen the film. what exactly happens?

[Dis]

okay it wasn't this film I saw, but Rear Window I was thinking of.

This film looks kind of interesting. I'll have to try to download it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_%28film%29

[Heresson]

His biggest fears included (...) small children

They're coming to get You, Alfred... they're coming to get You!

Man, how can You be afraid of children?
Unless he was teased or something

and policemen...

hm, perhaps he's had guilty conscience?

[Bkeela]

Rolly polly Alfie would have been seriously teased as a child one could easily assume - and he probably didn't have much luck with the women. So it was either become a serial killer, or make films about serial killers.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Heresson

hm, perhaps he's had guilty conscience?

Actually, there's a famous story Hitchcock used to tell about how he once misbehaved as a child, and his father had him arrested (by a friend who happened to be a policeman), letting him sit in jail for hours before the family finally showed up to see if he had "learned his lesson."

Pretty much all the wrongful-accusation/free-floating-guilt stuf in his films would seem to stem directly from that trauma.

But the creepy sexuality stuff is pure Catholicism.

[Zoid]

He also had to stand at the foot of his mothers bed every night telling her all he'd done that day. Thus the scene from Psycho...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Bkeela
Rolly polly Alfie would have been seriously teased as a child one could easily assume. So it was either become a serial killer, or make films about serial killers.

Well, there's 'Psycho' and 'Shadow Of A Doubt' and 'Frenzy'- serial killers all.


But there's also 'Torn Curtain', 'The Man Who Knew Too Much', 'North By Northwest', 'Topaz', 'Secret Agent', 'Saboteur'- spy stories all.


'The Wrong Man', 'North By Northwest' and 'Vertigo', 'Rear Window' - mistaken, false or misattributed identities.


And let's not forget the roles for strong, independent women- Vera Miles in 'Psycho', determined to find out what happened to her sister, Eva Marie Saint in 'North By Northwest', infiltrating a spy ring, Doris Day in 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' II, set on getting her child back, and Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter in 'Rear Window'... and Teresa Wright uncovering her favourite Uncle's awful secret in 'Shadow Of A Doubt'...

...and he probably didn't have much luck with the women.

Ahem.

...the finished screenplay was Hitchcock's own, along with his faithful collaborator, his wife, Alma Reville.

If you want out and out misogynistic films, try Michael Winner's- lingering shots of the rape and physical abuse of women in the 'Death Wish' films, or take a random stab at any of the low rent slasher movies of the 70s & 80s.

[Cort Haus]

Vertigo is about serial killing in a way - as the same character is killed twice by the plot. The fact that the character is 'constructed' from various women each time is certainly interesting, but my emotional response to the slow, abusive, hour-long second killing was one of revulsion.

What seemed particularly odd was that no motive or insight was offered into the woman who was first an accomplice, then a victim. She existed merely to be manipulated.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Vertigo is about serial killing in a way - as the same character is killed twice by the plot. The fact that the character is 'constructed' from various women each time is certainly interesting, but my emotional response to the slow, abusive, hour-long second killing was one of revulsion.

Not as serial killing is defined- two is too few.

It's really a film about obsessional love and identity.

[Winston]

Originally posted by TheStinger
IIRC he used to spy on Grace Kelly undressing

So he wasn't totally bonkers.

[Cort Haus]

Well, we know about Winston's sexual ... ahem ... 'preferences'

[Winston]

You know, I really can't comment on that pending my ongoing investigation of said 'preferences'.

I'm confident Grace Kelly would understand.