John Fawell on Alfred Hitchcock and his Actresses
John Fawell is an associate professor of humanities at Boston University with PhD in comparative literature. He is the author of the book Rear Window The Well-Made Film. Hannah Redigan interviewed Professor Fawell about Hitchcock and his relationship with his actresses.
Q: First off, do you think Hitchcock is a misogynist like Donald Spoto says in Spellbound by Beauty and The Dark Side of Genius, or do you think this is too severe? If so, why do you think this is an unfair characterization?
A: Well, he exhibits misogynist tendencies in some films and not others. But to call him a misogynist is to ignore the many films in which he features strong women’s roles–Rear Window, for example, where Grace Kelly’s character is stylish, plucky and a great deal more sensible than the male lead. Or those films that seem more hostile to the men than the woman. The heroes of Rear Window, Notorious, Vertigo, Birds and North by Northwest, five of H’s greatest films, are all rather cruel and judgmental towards their female leads. The film’ sympathies seem to be more with the women than the men. Hitchcock could be hard on men. The central story in these films is of men who assume the worst of women, often unfairly labeling them as promiscuous. The salvation of these men in these films is tied to their arriving at a more generous understanding of the women.
And we need to at least consider why actresses wanted to work with Hitchcock so much. He gave them strong roles and spent a great time considering the slightest aspect of their performance and look. That’s why the Hitchcock style is still featured in fashion magazines today. I have a hard time thinking of a director whose films revolve more around his female leads. The female leads in Rear Window, Notorious, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, To Catch a Thief, Stage Fright, Lifeboat, The Trouble with Harry, Suspicion, Rebecca , Young and Innocent, The Thirty Nine Steps, Marnie are all rich roles in which the actresses sparkle. The attitude towards the women in these films is adoring to the point of veneration. In these films it would not be an overstatement to call Hitchcock a woman’s director– not a feminist, but a director who produced films with multi-dimensional women characters, characters about which he felt deeply and who appealed strongly to women audiences. In certain films (Doris Day in Man Who Knew too Much and Kim Novak in Vertigo) he got career performances from actresses who otherwise made very few good films.
Q: Does any of Hitchcock’s alleged misogyny or sadism carry over into any of his films?
A: I think it emerged in his later films for a couple of reasons. One is the [Hays Code] broke down, allowing him to indulge in rather unsavory scenes that reflected, in more exacting detail, some of his darker attitudes towards women. Frenzy has a rape scene and several images involving women that make you thank God Hitchcock spent most of his career restricted by the Code. The rape scene in that film is inexcusably nasty. The shower scene in Psycho represents a landmark moment in violence against women on the screen. Despite its great fame, it’s not, in my mind, one of Hitchcock’s great contributions to film culture. Also, Hitchcock became hugely powerful in Hollywood in the early sixties and he got a little drunk on that power. He didn’t check himself as much in his attitude towards women both on and off screen and had some of these dark Svengali moments (most famously, with Tippi Hedren on the sets of Marnie and Birds) where he power- tripped a little on his actresses.
There are other recurrent images of violence towards women that run throughout his entire career–images of strangling women, shots of
women’s bodies parts (hands reaching out, legs moving spasmodically) when they are struggling under assault–that testify to a lifetime fascination with women enduring violence, something of a dark fantasy life. Some of these shots are quietly sordid and I don’t want to underemphasize a macabre attitude towards women that exists throughout Hitchcock’s oeuvre. It’s just not as all encompassing as critics would make it out to be and it co-exists with great healthy attitudes towards, and representations of, women at the same time.
Q: What’s the most common female archetype in Hitchcock’s films?
A: I guess the most famous archetype emerges from his later films. (Again, his later films tend to be overrepresented by those who would pigeonhole H. as a misogynist.) Hitchcock spoke of this type repeatedly in his interviews. It’s a prim blond in a very stiff, austere (usually green) suit who seems very clean pressed and proper on the outside but is a seething sexual cauldron on the inside. Tippie Hedren in Marnie and Birds and Kim Novak in Vertigo are prototypes. Hitchcock felt sexuality was most interesting when it was implied. He had no interest in Sophia Loren types, dark Mediterranean beauties whose sexuality was apparent. Another Hitchcock archetype is the Grace Kelly character in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief: blond again, but also humorous, cultured, chic, sophisticated, charming. A step ahead, in wit and character, of her male counterparts.
Q) Which Hitchcock film do you think best portrays his relationship with women?
Well, Vertigo is very close to Hitchcock’s life. It’s the film about a man who wants to graft a look onto a woman, to make her in the image of his fantasy. This is the film where Hitchcock grappled with his tendency to have strong relationships, fantasy relationships, with women through his camera. He once wrote a memo to an actress: “bring me your body and I will dress it.” He loved to control women through the camera, to fabricate a look for them, to make them glamorous. But it should be noted that there is a very strong self-criticizing function to this film as there is in Rear Window (another film about a man who lives too much in fantasy). Hitchcock’s films are filled with analysis of male sexual dysfunction–unhealthy voyeurism, impotence turned to violence, living too much in fantasy, objectifying women, being heedlessly cruel towards women. These are recurrent elements in his films and speak to a self-consciousness and self-criticism that those who label him a misogynist are strangely insensitive to.
Thus, Fawell contends that Hitchcock cannot be pigeonholed into one category. Although Hitchcock was cruel to women in his films, he also befriended many and helped kick start many actresses’ careers. Hitchcock, like most people, is simply to complex a person to be called a “misogynist” or “sadist”. Although he was flawed, he still was brilliant and did much to advance the art of film making.
Fawell, John. E-mail interview. 10 Nov. 2009. Originally published here.