Hitchcock’s place in film theory: a significant auteur or director of insignificant pictures?

Introduction

Since not all critics subscribe to the validity of the auteur theory, there is no consensus that Hitchcock can usefully be considered as such; nor that he is necessarily ‘significant’, if the auteur can be said to exist at all.  Grierson dismissed Hitchcock as ‘…no more than the world’s best director of unimportant pictures.’1  Schatz argues that his greatest movies were the work of a team which Hitchcock had taken with him from studio to studio, and that after The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) one of the reasons for Hitchcock’s ‘…decline was the dispersion of his movie production team.’2  Caughie only grudgingly accords Hitchcock auteur status: ‘…it may be possible to assign a relatively homogeneous function to the figure of the author if one works with a list which includes Ford, Hawks, Ray (with question marks around Hitchcock and Sirk.)’3

More fundamentally, there is a paradox about assigning Hitchcock auteur status.  The intellectual development of film studies, at least from the 50s and 60s, represents a series of reactions against la politique des auteurs (‘author policy’, inaccurately translated by Sarris as ‘auteur theory).4  Hitchcock was frequently adduced in evidence by those advocating alternatives to auteur theory, but certainly not because of his status as auteur: hardly possible for theorists who denied the validity of the concept.

That said, there is a remarkably consistent body of themes and techniques to be observed in Hitchcock’s work, from the British black and white spy stories and melodramas of the thirties, and the mature work of the Hollywood years on which his reputation primarily depends.  It is largely this consistency that has attracted critics to Hitchcock’s work, auteurist, structuralist and post-structuralist alike.  This paper reviews some critical milestones in the development of film theory over the last 50 years, attempting to locate Hitchcock’s work in that process.

Hitchcock as auteur?   

For all the subsequent criticism it attracted, auteurism represented one of the first coherent attempts to construct a theoretical framework within which to categorise the previously undifferentiated masses of Hollywood production.5  Its inception is frequently attributed to the young critics working on Cahiers du Cinéma in the mid-50s, but the notion originated with Astruc, whose phrase ‘camèra-stylo’ (‘camera-pen’) established ‘…the association of the film artist with the “serious” writer, and…on film as individual self-expression .’6  As the concept of auteurism developed (principally but not exclusively through the writing in Cahiers, and subsequently, the work of Andrew Sarris), its defining propositions included the following:

• ‘cinema has…an equivalence to literature, or any other art form of profundity and meaning’;7 

• even though it is produced collectively, a film is most likely to have value when the director dominates;

• a director’s auteurist status emerges from the consistency of themes, images and styles over the whole body of his or her work;

• the truly artistic director, through the creative power of their individual personality, is able to transcend the limitations of the commercial context within which the film is produced;

• especially for Truffaut,  the key lay in the cinema’s distinctive language, and true auteurs display their mastery of the unique components of cinematography (as opposed for example to the simple ‘recording’ of a stage play or an adaptation from classical literature);8

• in the work of the French critics, the adulation of classic Hollywood cinema: some European directors (Renoir for instance) were accorded auteur status, but generally the accolade was reserved for those working in Hollywood.  Writing in Cahiers, Rohmer even compared Hollywood to ‘…that haven which Florence was to painters in the Quattrocento or Vienna was for musicians in the nineteenth century’.9

The notion that Hollywood was the equal of or even superior to, the high art of the European cinema was imported to the US (with some embellishments) by Sarris.10  For Sarris, auteurism not only described a particular directorial style, it also represented a test of quality: a key ‘…premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value.’ (My emphasis11.)  Caughie is more measured in his summary of the characteristics that defined an auteur: ‘Uniqueness of personality, brash individuality, persistence of obsession and originality were given an evaluative power above that of stylistic smoothness or social seriousness.’12   How far does Hitchcock’s work display these and the other features that bestow auteur status?

If as Caughie suggests, brash individualism and obsessiveness are prerequisites of auteur status, than Hitchcock has a substantial claim.  He was one of the most self-publicising directors in the history of the cinema, displaying what Leitch called a ‘genius for self-advertising,’13  a trait which finds its way into the films themselves (and not just through the cameo personal appearances).  As Bordwell points out, his distinctive cinematic style emphasises how far Hitchcock is in control, capitalising ‘…on every permissible chance to display self-consciousness, flaunt its superior knowledge, and mark its suppressive operations.’ 14

A series of common themes permeates much of his work, perhaps to the point of obsessiveness, of which just a few include:

• disguise, illusion and mistaken identity (The 39 Steps (1935), The Secret Agent (1936), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1955), Psycho (1960), all Alfred Hitchcock)

• the combination of elements of romantic comedy and the suspense thriller (The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes (1938), and classically the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, with the casting of Doris Day as Dr. McKenna’s (James Stewart) wife: all films directed by Hitchcock);

• the ambiguity of guilt and innocence (The 39 Steps, North by North West (1959), The Man Who Knew Too Much, all Hitchcock).

But the common characteristics extend beyond the thematic, and include those cinematic devices and techniques deployed in many of his films and which constitute his cinematic signature.   These include the use of montage (for example the sequence in Torn Curtain (1966, Alfred Hitchcock), when the taxi driver recounts to an East German security officer the tale of Professor Armstrong’s (Paul Newman) visit to the spy network.  The homage to Lang is emphasised by the fact that the account is in German.)  Hitchcock’s camera-work alternates between the highly subjective (as Bordwell says, reinforcing the narrative’s stress on a single character’s point of view) and the omniscient, concealing information as a way of building up suspense: in Psycho the camera lingers outside the partially opened door to Norman’s (Anthony Perkins) ‘mother’s’ room.15

These characteristic stylistic devices demonstrate Hitchcock’s obsession with the use of cinematic techniques as tools of story-telling.  In his interviews with Truffaut he expressed his regrets about the arrival of sound since he believed the availability of dialogue had reduced the importance of filmic narrative:  ‘In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call “photographs of people talking”.  When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.  I always try first to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and a bit of film in between.’ 16

The influence of silent movies remains strong in Hitchcock’s films, which are characterised by sparse dialogue and long stretches where the narration proceeds purely through visual images.   One sequence in the re-make of The Man Who Knew Too Much, when Dr McKenna and his wife meet at the Albert Hall and foil the assassination attempt, lasts 10 minutes without dialogue.  We see the two talking but have to infer meaning from their actions.    In Psycho, there is a 17-minute sequence without dialogue (except for Norman’s (Anthony Perkins) complaint to his ‘mother’ about the blood), during which we witness Marion’s (Janet Leigh) murder, and Norman’s disposal of the evidence.  Because he elects to manage without dialogue, Hitchcock has to rely on cinematic techniques to advance the story and hold our attention.

Hitchcock and the structuralist critics

As with most theorists, the defenders of auteurism could be highly selective in their approach to a director’s work, focusing on those movies whose characteristics supported the thesis and ignoring those that did not.  (Hitchcock made similar distinctions himself: in his Truffaut interviews he says of Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), among other films, ‘…it’s not a Hitchcock picture.’17)  Even within the pages of Cahiers, there were critics of the auteurist approach, notably Bazin, who argued the case for locating the work of individual directors within both its commercial context (the traditions of Hollywood) and its social context.18

Auteurists insisted not only that the director was central, but that the work in all its aspects was the result of the director’s authoritative and conscious decisions.  Peter Wollen, among others, rejected this notion, arguing that a more rigorous analysis would reveal meanings embedded in the underlying structures of movies.19  Drawing on the anthropological work of Levi-Strauss, structuralists argued that meaning is constructed by its opposition to something else: ‘through binary oppositions: “good” means something only in relation to “bad”; “raw”  and “cooked” signify opposing states.’20 Among other things ‘auteur-structuralism’ detached the characteristics associated with a director’s work from the director as an individual.  As Maltby puts it: ‘Movies marked by the sign “Directed by Alfred Hitchcock,” for example, could be shown to possess recurring structures, but auteur-structuralists relieved themselves of the burden of having to demonstrate that Alfred Hitchcock had intentionally placed them there.  “Hitchcock” became a body of structuring principles that could be divined from a critical examination of films, and bore no necessary relation to the small, fat, male body of Alfred Hitchcock the person, which routinely appeared in each of these movies.  The author became, in one formulation, the “author-code”, one among several organising principles of coherence in a text.’21   

We have already seen how recurring themes and images characterise Hitchcock’s work; moreover it is not difficult to express these themes as ‘binary oppositions’:

• guilt and innocence (any number of films, including The 39 Steps, North by North West);

•  appearance and reality (Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Psycho);

• suspicion and trust (Torn Curtain, The 39 Steps)

• sin and redemption (Psycho).

The difficulty here however is that both auteurists and their structuralist successors draw on similar evidence to support their propositions.   The key difference between them is that the auteurist sees the recurrent themes as the product of directorial intent; the structuralists as inadvertent and unintended.

Hitchcock, post-structuralism and cine-psychoanalysis

According to Maltby, post-structuralism was a reaction to structuralism’s ‘…broad incorporative theoretical procedures,’ and was ‘…concerned with what had been left out or repressed,’ as much with what had been included in a film text.22   Despite its rejection of structuralism, post-structuralism shared many of its fundamental assumptions, including the proposition that movies contain repressed or hidden meanings which the discerning analyst could unearth.  There is not the space in this paper to do justice to the rich and varied theoretical approaches developed under the broad post-structuralist umbrella.   However, there are some important consequences of these approaches which it is crucial to understand, particularly if we are to explain Hitchcock’s continuing attraction for theorists of all persuasions.

First, the application of cine-psychoanalytic techniques built on and extended the structuralists’ exploration of a movie’s hidden meanings, which could be interpreted as ‘…a symptom of its author’s, its characters’, or (even) its culture’s condition.’  So, ‘…cine-psychoanalysis could interpret recurrent plot motifs or stylistic traits as symptoms of deep-seated anxiety and neurosis made manifest unknowingly in the organisation of movie aesthetics.’  Thus Robin Wood can argue that sexuality rather than suspense is the key to Hitchcock’s films, and that ‘…sexual relationships in his work are inevitably based on power, the obsession with power and the dread of impotence being as central to his method as to his thematic.’23

Second, it follows that, if there are hidden meanings which go beyond the director’s intentions, it becomes the responsibility of the critic/viewer to uncover them.   As Bordwell puts it, this creates a ‘search warrant’ for hunting repressed meanings: ‘what permits the endless variety of meanings to be generated from a film are in large part the critical practices themselves.’24

And thirdly, this leads us to the role of the film spectator, who effectively becomes the final arbiter of a film’s meaning, since a film text (no less than a poem or novel) ‘…cannot be understood in isolation from the act of its interpretation.’25   In the context of reception studies (a development moving beyond post-structuralism), this interpretation may be shaped by individual values, the historical setting within which it is made (and which plainly varies over time), or according to a variety of group characteristics, including gender, ethnicity and sexuality.  Hitchcock movies offer fertile grounds for exploring all three of these strands.

First, Hitchcock’s films lend themselves readily to the exploration of psycho-analytical issues, many dealing directly with characters’ psychological conditions, including Vertigo, Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964) and Psycho, while dream sequences and flashbacks feature, in Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), among others.  But beyond that Hitchcock’s recurrent themes invite psychoanalytic examination.  Wood is just one critic who detects signs of Hitchcock’s Catholic upbringing as undercurrents in his films.26  Oedipal themes also recur, for example in North by North West, but classically in Psycho (‘A son is a poor substitute for a lover’, as Norman says to Marion.)

A number of critics (not all approaching Hitchcock from a feminist perspective) have identified misogynistic subtexts in his films.  The quotation from Wood earlier stressed the power struggle characterising sexual relationships in Hitchcock movies.  This manifests itself in Hannay’s (Robert Donat) early encounters with Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) in The 39 Steps, in which he forces himself on her in a railway carriage to avoid detection by the police; and in Gilbert’s (Michael Redgrave) patronising treatment of Iris (Margaret Lockwood) in The Lady Vanishes.  But it dominates Vertigo, as Scottie (James Stewart) seeks total control over Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak), and in Marnie, in which Mark (Sean Connery) commits marital rape.

Finally, Hitchcock’s obsession with performance, the cinema itself, and the relationship between performance and audience offers obvious attractions for those seeking to explore the notion of the spectator.  Performance and theatricality are persistent motifs: The 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Torn Curtain all include characteristic set-piece tableaux in theatres or concert halls.  Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) has been read as ‘…an allegory of the film-going experience’,27 with Jefferies (James Stewart) displaying the voyeuristic curiosity that lies at the heart of spectating.

For Leitch the relationship between director and audience is at the heart of Hitchcock movies which he sees as a series of elaborate games: ‘…a Hitchcock movie is a two-person non-zero sum game.’28  But there are profound ambiguities in the relationship:  his techniques for building up suspense mean that the audience often has to supply meaning (what does lie behind Norman’s mother’s door in Psycho?)  But at the same time, Hitchcock is a spectator at his own movies.  He dismissed his cameo roles as gags,29 but they do exert an alienating effect, in the manner of a Brechtian narrator, making it clear ‘…that the eyes of the father are always on his characters’30. 

Conclusions

As we have seen, theorists from a variety of schools have found an abundance of material in Hitchcock to satisfy their distinctive approaches.  It is not clear however, how far film theory in general has developed empirically, by extrapolating from what is to be found in film texts; or whether it derives largely from sources external to the cinema (such as psycho-analysis or dialectical materialism).  Certainly, ‘Analysis tends to find what it is looking for.’31

Finally we have to remember that Hitchcock was a commercial film-maker, who sought (and frequently achieved) box-office success.  Sterritt reminds us that Hitchcock was driven by a ‘…near compulsive desire for financial security and career stability,’32 and he was always happy to exploit his ‘auteur status’ as a marketing device (through his TV series no less than his movies).  Maltby urges us to engage with Hollywood’s ‘commercial aesthetic’, since movies’ ‘…polyvalence, their indeterminacy, their malleability, their capacity to absorb interpretation unscathed are properties of their commodity status.’33  

Bibliography

Bordwell, David (1985), The Classical Hollywood Cinema Routledge, London

Caughie, John ed., (1981) Theories of Authorship London, Routledge

Chapman, James (1998) Popular American Film, Open University 

Barry Grant (ed,) (2003), Film Genre Reader III, University of Texas Press, Austin

Hollows, Joanne ed, (1995), Approaches to Popular Film, Manchester University Press, Manchester

Leitch, Thomas (1991), Find the Director and other Hitchcock games University of Georgia Press, Georgia

Maltby, Richard (1995) Hollywood Cinema, Blackwell, Oxford

Rohmer, Eric (1955), ‘Rediscovering America’, Cahiers du Cinéma,54

Schatz, Thomas (1988) The Genius of the System, Pantheon Books, New York 

Sinyard, Neil (1994), The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Multimedia Books Ltd, London

David Sterritt, (1993), The Films of Alfred Hitchcock CUP, Cambridge

Stoddart, Helen (1995) ‘Auteurism and film-authorship theory’

Truffaut, François (1978), Hitchcock  Paladin, London

Robin Wood, (1977) ‘Ideology, Genre, Auteur’, Film Comment, 13, No. 1

 

Filmography

Birds, The (Hitchcock, 1963)

Frenzy (Hitchcock, 1972)

Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964)

Lady Vanishes, The (Hitchcock, 1938)

North by North West (Hitchcock, 1959)

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)

Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)

Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940)

Secret Agent, The (Hitchcock, 1936)

Thirty Nine Steps (Hitchcock, 1935)

Torn Curtain (Hitchcock, 1966)

Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

Notes

1 Cited in James Chapman, (1998) ‘Authorship’, in Popular American Film, Open University,  p139

2 Thomas Schatz, (1988) The Genius of the System, Pantheon Books, New York  p.491 

3 John Caughie, ed., (1981) Theories of Authorship London, Routledge, p.3

4 Helen Stoddart, ‘Auteurism and film-authorship theory’, in Joanne Hollows, ed, (1995), Approaches to Popular Film, Manchester University Press, Manchester, p.38 We will continue with Sarris’ phrase in this paper.

5 Richard Maltby (1995) Hollywood Cinema, Blackwell, Oxford, p. 501

6 John Caughie, (ed.) (1981), Theories of Authorship, Routledge, London,  p.9

7 Hollows, (1995), p.39

8 François Truffaut, ‘Une certaine tendence du Cinéma Française’, cited in Hollows, (1995),  p.39

9 Eric Rohmer, (1955), ‘Rediscovering America’, Cahiers du Cinéma,54

10 Andrew Sarris, (1962), ‘Notes on the auteur theory in 1962,’ Film Culture, Winter 1962-3, reproduced in Caughie (1981), p. 62

11 Sarris, in Caughie (1981), p. 64

12 Caughie (1981), p.11

13 Thomas Leitch, 1991, Find the Director and other Hitchcock games University of Georgia Press, Georgia, p. 1

14 David Bordwell, (1985), The Classical Hollywood Cinema Routledge, London, p.79

15 James Chapman, (1998), Popular American Film, 1945-1995 Open University, p.141

16 François Truffaut, (1978), Hitchcock  Paladin, London,  p. 67

17 Truffaut (1978)  p. 146

18 Chapman (1998),  p.127

19 Chapman (1998), p. 131

20 Maltby (1995),  p. 503

20 Maltby, (1995), p.504

22 Maltby (1995), p. 543

23 Robin Wood,  (1977) ‘Ideology, Genre, Auteur’, Film Comment, 13, No. 1, cited in Barry Grant (ed,) (2003), Film Genre Reader III, University of Texas Press, Austin

24 Maltby,  (1995) pp. 542-3

25 Maltby,  (1995) p. 549

26 Grant, (2003), p.43

27 Neil Sinyard, (1994), The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Multimedia Books Ltd, London, p.84

28 Leitch, (1991), p.18

29 Truffaut, (1978), p. 55

30 David Sterritt, (1993), The Films of Alfred Hitchcock CUP, Cambridge, p.14

31 Maltby, (1995), p. 526

32 Sterritt, (1993) p. 20

33 Maltby,  (1995) p.553