The Romantic Fate of Authority Figures in the films of Alfred Hitchcock

Grant, Bergman and that kiss from 'Notorious'

Men, more often than not,  are normally cast as authority figures in Hitchcock movies. (The glaring exception to this ‘rule’ could certainly be ‘Strangers on a Train’ where no authority figure actually exists within the story. There are two dim possibilities: Bruno’s father is plotted against by his son,  as a way of punishing him for his inadequacy as a reliable authority figure. Hitch perennial Leo G Carroll as Ruth Roman’s father is an authority figure, but elderly, and a totally unthreatening one.)  Usually, but not always, the male authority figures in  Hitchcock films are  police officers or government agents finding themselves in an emotional conundrum, or rather a state of emotional ambiguity, in that they tend to fall in love with women who may be either perpetrators of a crime, or conversely, the victims of wrongdoing. 


The mens’ dilemma takes up a large part of the sub-text of a number of Hitchcock films. These sub-texts  unfold  as the plot reveals the leading (or supporting character’s) feelings of guilt  toward the female object(s) of their desire. The male characters are left with no other choice  than  to take responsibility for their own neuroses, ascertaining (for example), the harshness to which they have exposed the woman to danger, when they originally wanted to protect her from such. Equilibrium between the sexes is eventually restored by the end, with the woman taming the man and the man accepting with resignation,  that  his single status has been curtailed by the woman. Often,  the struggle between the sexes is solved by the woman dying, rarely the man,  or sometimes but rarely, both.

Grant and Saint. The audience excused Cary lots of things

SABOTAGE (1936):  How Sylvia Sidney and her police officer friend/lover  escape  justice by a hairsbreadth, because he interprets her plight as circumstantial, and not of her own making

NOTORIOUS (1945): How agent Cary Grant is at first solicitious toward Ingrid Bergman, then becomes hostile towards her as she accepts an offer to spy on her father’s friends who are Nazis, whom she hates for being un-American

VERTIGO (1958): How ex-policeman James Stewart falls in love with the mysterious Kim Novak, with no knowledge of her true identity or the extent to which he is hurting his loyal girlfriend Midge

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1958): How advertising executive Cary Grant is mistaken for a secret agent and is helped by Eva Marie Saint, who is actually attempting to get him to help her out of a sticky situation with the sinister James Mason. He does not realise this and consequently is always (inadvertently) placing her in danger when in fact he is falling in love with her and wants to help her.

PSYCHO (1969): Where the audience is led to believe that there is the possibility of Arbogast the private detective falling in love with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) before he even finds out that she’s been killed

MARNIE (1964): How Sean Connery is wise to the ways of Tippy Hedren who is a thief and a liar, but falls madly in love with her anyway

I would argue that as far as Hitchcock is concerned, the guys appear to be losers, at least when it comes to romance. The least of these is Cary Grant. Grant  avoids  being arrested for murder in ‘Suspicion’; escapes to the hospital and presumably lives  happily ever after with Ingrid Bergman at the end of ‘Notorious’ and then travels happily into the tunnel of love with Eva Marie Saint in his arms at the conclusion of ‘North by Northwest’. But as far as romance is concerned, most of Hitchcock’s male characters are living in chumpsville.

How  James Stewart is an authority figure in ‘Rope’, but  doesn’t have a love interest at all,  and he loses the love of his life when Kim Novak falls out of a church window at the conclusion of ‘Vertigo’.

How Laurence Olivier spends an inordinate amount of time wringing his hands and feeling guilty and miserable in ‘Rebecca’, concerning a woman who doesn’t even appear on-screen, when he is married to the young, attractive and willing Joan Fontaine.

Milland, Kelly and Cummings in 'Dial M'

In ‘Dial M for Murder’  how Ray Milland botches murdering his wife, (Grace Kelly) and ends up being found out, even when the audience is given every indication that he’s going to get away with it

How Robert Donat supposedly hates being literally manacled to  Madeleine Carroll in ‘The 39 Steps’, when she is gorgeous, classy, intelligent and single

How Margaret Lockwood brushes off Michael Redgrave constantly in ‘the Lady Vanishes’ when he refuses to believe her preposterous stories

The Freudian manner in which Jessica Tandy punishes Rod Taylor for being her son instead of her husband in ‘The Birds’ and his cavalier treatment  of  love interests Tippy Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette as a result

None of these guys have what you would call a satisfying love life. So, how do Hitchcock’s characters rate (both male and female) when it comes to marriage and family? Hitchcock condescends to  look the happy American family up-and-down like a frustrated  monk as it turns out to be distinctly wanting. He is more interested in the neuroses and dysfunction within the family unit but appears totally  disinterested glorifying the concept of ‘the family’  for any kind of ideological purpose.

How Vera Miles goes quietly insane by the  mere suspicion of whether  husband Henry Fonda is guilty (or not) of armed robbery in ‘The Wrong Man’. The family here is portrayed as positive and nurturing, but extremely vulnerable to circumstances outside its control.

Handcuffed to the girl who double crossed him!

In ‘Marnie’, Marnie’s problematic relationship with her mother is explained as a difficulty in being brought up within a one parent family. Her relationship with male authority figure Sean Connery is difficult and painful. Her fear of the colour red; her inability to have a connected relationship with a man; her inability to lead an ‘honest’ life. All of this is blamed upon her dysfunctional relationship with her mother and her inability to find the ideal man. Sean Connery has a difficult part to play. He is portrayed as the bad guy who wants to constrain Marnie for no discernible reason. He says he loves her but constantly violates  her freedom and her person in contradiction to his pronouncements.

John Gavin’s difficult private life in ‘Psycho’, as well as Janet Leigh’s unspoken dissatisfaction with her sister and other unnamed family members. Gavin and Leigh’s relationship is largely explained by the similarity of their emotional backgrounds.

The parents of Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ are portrayed in such a way that they are to blame for her not being married and for her being supposedly ‘unattractive’. Fontaine’s parents  are cold, aloof and remote without the slightest concern for her well-being as she falls into the arms of Cary Grant and an uncertain future.

Turbulent relationship

Hitchcock’s ultimate blonde, Grace Kelly appeared in three of his movies. In ‘Rear Window’ and ‘Dial M for Murder’ her parents are never mentioned. In ‘To Catch a Thief’ she has a mother. Perhaps  portraying a glamour girl with parents was not thought of as good box office, and  even off-putting to male members of the audience.  Kelly is redeemed as being too good to be a murderess in ‘Dial M for Murder;  and then rewarded for being a good sport  by nabbing James Stewart for a husband in ‘Rear Window’.  She is punished for having a boyfriend whilst married in ‘Dial M’ and lectured by James Stewart for being too bossy and possessive in ‘Rear Window’. But she remains an unimpeachable object of unreachable desire throughout her Hitchcock period, whether married or single and is never held responsible for any of the mishaps of her male co-stars in any of the films mentioned.

Sylvia Sidney worked for Lang as well. What a woman

In many of Hitchcock’s films, family members are either remote or completely absent. Cary Grant has a mother in ‘North by Northwest’ but no parents in ‘Suspicion’ and ‘Notorious’. In a number of Hitchcock’s early British films, such as ‘Blackmail’, ‘Sabotage’ and ‘Secret Agent’, family life is portrayed in a somewhat positive light, but emotional support is bound to be withdrawn from a family member who may do the wrong thing, or get into some kind of trouble. Sylvia Sidney in ‘Sabotage’ is placed in an untenable position after losing her younger brother and wreaking revenge on her husband. She has no one else to turn to except a police officer who is sympathetic to her plight. In ‘Blackmail’, a young woman defends herself from being raped but does not begin to imagine that the authorities or her family will help her; in ‘Secret Agent’ the concept of the family unit is gently satirised, as John Gielgud poses as Madeleine Carroll’s husband when they are actually not connected in any way at all.

Despite acknowledging that women can have difficult and compromised lives, it would appear that if you’re as beautiful and glamorous as Grace Kelly or Madeleine Carroll, this can tide you over the other gigantic waves of a demanding life. Today, such an attitude may seem a tad, well... ludicrous, but it could be argued, what else is there? A woman should have her family to fall back on, whilst men only have women, whilst both men and women  seem to do nothing but misunderstand, and mistreat each other.  Thus men's fate is the struggle in attempting to ascertain the woman's veracity, and being routed in the attempt. Thus is the sad  lot of of male authority figures in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. 

This day 50 years ago. Mexican stand-off with the Russians. Who blinked first?

On this day in 1961, the Soviets and United States forces endured a stand-off that lasted for at least twelve hours, as a result of the building of the Berlin wall and subsequent restrictions of western diplomats and others  from travelling from one end of the city to the other, according to a blog published in the Washington Post today and available to read here.  I came across this link on Twitter, and read with interest how the newly elected President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was thrown into the deep end of high-stakes European diplomacy with little or no experience, and how ably he acquitted himself, whether it was by good luck or management. Relations between the Soviet Union and the west were practically threadbare, and this picture below  is as good an example as any hyperbole from me as to what the 'relationship', if you could call it that, had been reduced to:

Soviet and western tanks playing a game of cat and mouse along Friedrichstrasse was not a particularly edifying sight, as the rest of the world held its breath in anticipation of which side would give in first to relieve the tension which must have been a pretty unsettling experience for all concerned. I find it difficult to imagine what it must have been like to have lived through this period of history, when nuclear war seemed an ever-present 'given'. That is, that nuclear war was  probably more likely to happen than not, which, when you think about it, is an extremely difficult, not to say, unacceptable state of affairs to have to contemplate.


The blog published in the Washington Post today concerns the de-classification of hundreds of documents concerning this period in European history, when it seemed likely that another world war would break out, given the fractious nature of the cold war, and the bellicosity of Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev, alongside the green and untried John F Kennedy in his first year of office as President of the United States. Reading this blog coincides with a recent purchase I made of a book which I once owned and decided to buy again, called 'A Question of Character: A Life of John F Kennedy, by Thomas C. Reeves. Published in 1992, the book was a bestseller, but it did its best, if not to debunk the Camelot myth completely, then at least to put it into a bit of perspective. I've never had much time for the slavering coffee table book mentality of many books that have been written about the President, and I found Reeves' approach as a respected historian, to be  free of any kind of glossing over of the truth of events, or embellishing behaviour that could not have been acceptable when it occurred, much less acceptable now. Today,  the conduct of politicians is virtually held to ransom by committee, the media and other structural entities which have existed since the Watergate debacle that saw the political system of the United States crash to its lowest point in 1972-74, and that subject is in itself ripe for a separate post, but not right now.

Children play along a section of the wall.

I'm far too young to remember John F Kennedy, and I went on to study history at university having a neutral stance about his legacy out of sheer ignorance, and I admit this. I wrote an essay on the Cuban Missile Crisis and came away with the belief that with a mixture of luck and perceptive decision-making on the part of the Americans, a nuclear war with Cuba and the Soviet Union was probably avoided. I gained a respect for the President from researching this subject, and also came away with a better understanding of why he was so loved and revered as a great leader. When you study history its very easy to do one of two things. Either you can look back and say 'I told you so', or you can conversely, (or should I say contrarily), embellish on something you find embarrassing and try to hide it or twist it around into something that simply is not true. Not having any kind of stake in the Kennedy 'myth' one way or another, I do think that after re-reading Reeves book, there were many areas in Kennedy's personal life in which he behaved irresponsibly and with conduct unbecoming a head of state. That the person concerned indulged in bad behaviour in his personal life does not however, limit his decision-making abilities, or his right of mandate over the people who elected him.


 It's a shame that we don't have  leaders of Kennedy's calibre today, as the world unfortunately, is as unsafe and insecure now, as it was then. We should let our leaders do the leading. We should elect them in good faith and let them do their job. We should not pat nut-jobs on the back for assassinating them, (or even attempting to) but instead elect them out of office if we decide we don't like them anymore or are dissatisfied with their performance. There are many things that change, but also a lot of things that stay the same. Things have in the past been bad. Do we really want to go back to the way they were? Let's hope not.

The On-Going Republican and Democratic Meat Parade

And so it goes on.

Is Thomas Jefferson turning in his grave?

2012 will be upon us sooner or later. Whether you're an American citizen or not, the twelve months of boredom known as the election year will again be lumbered out into the unforgiving gaze of the public arena. Presumably to comfort the locals  in their delusion that they still are living in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. Or is likely to see.


For outsiders like me, the entire process is of dubious value, save only for the politicians who seem to enjoy  making as much publicity and mileage for themselves out of the event as they possibly can. Recent developments, such as the sudden emergence of the Occupy movement serves to highlight the paucity of policy on both sides of the House, and how bereft America has become when, at a time of economic crisis, the same tired, old wise saws are trotted out as gospel: the country is still a great power; we can fight back our enemies; don't let the terrorists win; -- and so it goes on, ad nauseum.


As the supposed opposition to this kind of nonsense that is apparently trotted out because it's the only way  the Republicans can get re- elected, the Democrats fashion themselves as the spokespeople for the underdogs: the unemployed, working people, African Americans, minorities, trade unions, that is anyone who isn't a millionaire and cannot hope to profit from the brutal austerity measures and giant corporate funding policies of the Republican party. The Democrats remind me of a peashooter thinking he can down the elephant, and upon discovering that he can't, proceeds to join the elephant.


The Democrats are ideologically off-balance. Loathe to be murdered by the Republicans by acknowledging that American society is as riddled with class bias and inequality as any other country in the world, the Hill has the unhappy knack of stabbing its mainstream supporters in the back whenever it suits them, with the threat that if Republicans win back office, things for them will be  far worse than they are now.


We had the unedifying spectacle of that bastion of fearless journalism 'Mother Jones' not only attempting to smear Julian Assange as he was emerging as a hero for his exposure of state secrets through the Wikileaks website. Recently, (and surprisingly ) they were one of the first to put the boot into the Occupy movement in an article which was not only negative but downright hostile, from a magazine that supposedly encourages dissent and is some kind of 21st century version of the counter-culture movement magazines like 'Ramparts' and 'Rolling Stone' which genuinely encouraged free expression and political involvement of groups and individuals in such issues as Vietnam and the Watergate scandal.


To put it bluntly, 'Mother Jones' is no 'Ramparts', and is doing its readers a disservice if it thinks that it is.  Attacking movements and individuals who have a sincere agenda for change, rather than attempting to correct their own ideological pratfalls, will not win 'Mother Jones' a wider readership. If they would only stop hitting their supporters over the head with a lot of meaningless noise about how profoundly wonderful Barack Obama is, and  concentrate on  the issues without giving the opposition all  the free publicity, they would get a fairer hearing from those of us who believe in honest journalism, even if it has to come from the mainstream-liberal-establishment media.  


I guess that after all is said and done, it's going to be the public who loses out. The media of the left as well as the right, only think of the 'public' in the crudest of all possible terms, that is, how much money is to be made out of us, and how stupid they seem to think we are. In that respect, I cannot imagine the 2012 Presidential race as anything more than a protracted and corrupt piece of political theatre, merely designed for the lowest common denominator and utilised for the business of keeping the public in the dark, and severely ill-informed of any concrete or meaningful political agenda.

edison lighthouse - Love grows where my rosemary goes

TrendsMap Proves Scary Twitter Censorship Of #OccupyWallStreet From Trending Topics

TrendsMap Proves Scary Twitter Censorship Of #OccupyWallStreet From Trending Topics

Monsters, melodrama & comedians

This is not a post about politics.


What politicians do not understand is that they are in the thrall of popular culture. Everything we have ever known about modern-day politicians is predicated on the fact that they are human and fallible. Not the fact  that they are any longer meant to be  great leaders.


  Politicians ache for popular acceptance like young adolescents. They take to the stage of popular opinion like star-struck Hollywood starlets on the road to oblivion.  The love of the throng, the roar of the crowd, all because of our embrace of popular culture and how popular opinion always takes the side of the underdog.


 The underdog is personified as an outsider: vampires; gangsters; drug addicts; homeless people. We may never have met any of them, but they are still one of us - we embrace them for daring to be different in contrast to those of us who have been taught to contort our spirits in the rush for money, status and precarious social position.


The people the public love the most are allowed to do what we dare not do. They laugh at social proprieties. They thumb their noses at the social conventions we appear to embrace. They suck other people's blood. Or look so horrendous they do not appear out of doors for fear of starting a riot. Or maybe they are so romantically compromised,  their lives do not appear to be worth living any longer. 


Politicians are none of these things and they know it. Politicians shamelessly tout for our approval at the ballot box.  They are no longer the  anointed leaders of our teetering democracies. They are meant to represent law and order in an unordered and anarchic world that constantly devalues them as maniacs and shysters. Shamelessly, we offend them easily, and we allow them to hit back at us as just being regular guys (and gals), like the dimwits who voted them in in the first place. We are not convinced and devalue and humiliate them further.


All of this is just a germ of an idea, and if I could give examples of why we love monsters, melodrama and comedians at this early point in time, I'm sure you would like me to: First of all we have the man with the permanent smile on his face. 'The Man Who Laughs" (1927)

Gwynplaine was born into a troop of gypsies who abused children and were driven out of Europe. He was left with a deformity of the mouth and can't stop smiling. Now everybody he knows thinks he's an imbecile. What a life.


Our emotional lives exist as they are observed by narrative practitioners of popular culture and viewed   through the refracting mirror of melodrama. Pre-code Hollywood  films of the late twenties and early thirties  exist to remind us that we actually had feelings, before the Catholic Legion of Decency started interfering and got the upper hand (if you'll pardon the pun).


 Secular practioners of melodramatics like pulp writers and pulp movie directors told us it was alright to be romantic and show that we had feelings, especially if they were heterosexual and designed not for sexual pleasure so much as procreation. Otherwise they were to be, if not outlawed, then severely frowned upon.  Movie stars flouncing themselves around and complaining about the heat were an inadequate substitution for substantial connections with other human beings, no matter how inadequate they may have appeared to be. Todd Browning's 'Freaks' illustrates the frustration of outsiders being judged by 'normal' people as deviate when they are actually perfectly normal, well-adusted people, unfortunately at the mercy of the consensus-driven status quo:

I remember reading somewhere that if you want to be loved as a show business performer, you should become a comedian, because people will love you if you can make them laugh. I'm an optimist and believe, contrary to most of the human race, that there is a lot in life that you should be laughing about. This unfortunately puts me at odds with the majority who believe that laughter is not productive, and downright anathema to being a normal and well-adjusted person.Luckily for me, I have centuries of tradition on my side going back to ancient Greece in the 5th century before Christ. But I shouldn't boast I know. Here is an excerpt of 'Up Pompeii', a British comedy that pokes fun, at well, just about everything and that is why I revere it: