MovieChat Forums > Stage Fright (1950) Discussion > Menstrual imagery?

Menstrual imagery?

posted 16 years ago by Max_Planck
23 replies | jump to latest

The evidence of Charlotte Inwood's "guilt" is that the front of her pure white dress has been bloodied. Admittedly, it's the lower half and hem of the dress. If it was the crotch area, that would be too blatant!!

Anyway...at the fundraising event for war orphans, Commodore Gill despoils the doll's dress so that it can be held up in accusatory fashion to Charlotte. Rather than find something else that could stain it red, he slices open his own hand to smear it with real blood. I always think that's a pretty weird scene.

I'll assume some knowledge of the complicated and ambivalent attitude to women in Hitchcock's films. The films often seem to exhibit a fear of the female (no time for a film theory lecture, so I'm simplifying here, of course). It doesn't seem to be commented on much - probably because it isn't a very popular film - that Stage Fright features an early example of slightly codified menstrual imagery.

I think it could be argued that this use of the colour of blood to recall a woman's guilt prefigures that in Marnie too.

Brian De Palma (who else?) would take it much further 26 years later with Carrie.

[–] kimpunkrock 16 years ago

Good post!

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=186977

The Truth is out there.

[–] boxerrebellion 9 years ago

I am always amazed to find out film code meanings.... I just pretty much accept the story at face value, besides things like political messages. Even at 52, I guess I'm just a bit naive.

[–] pillfeast 16 years ago

Am I the only one who found it strongly vaginal?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_1ByUHUtsQ

Isn't it delightful?

[–] Max_Planck 16 years ago

Ha! Yes, I wonder what colour that set was! And the chaise longue is meant to represent....!?!

I don't know about vaginal, but it certainly is weird. Is it meant to be a sort of hall-of-mirrors illusion-type thing, with the three identical chairs? It's definitely "passage-like", so I can see where you're coming from.

EDIT: Reviewing this thread nine months later, I see that the clip that "pillfeast" provided a link for has now been removed from YouTube due to copyright reasons. Bah.

What is the internet coming to, eh?

[–] Max_Planck 15 years ago

It was last August when I first posted the message above about Stage Fright's "menstrual imagery".

The other night I watched Robert Aldrich's Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte for the first time in many, many years. I was quite startled to see, in the film's prologue, this image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakingwithmedusa/3576112030/.

It's well documented (and readily apparent to most vieweres) how Aldrich's two pictures with Bette Davis were both heavily influenced by Hitchcock. But I'd quite forgotten that he'd lifted from Stage Fright the image of a woman wearing a blood-stained white dress and made its....*ahem*...menstrual aspect that much more explicit! Again, the image is intimately tied to the idea of a woman's guilt (in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte's case, guilty of plotting to run away with another man's wife and, it seems at first, guilty of his murder).

Is it coincidence only that Aldrich's lead character, like that of Stage Fright, is also called Charlotte?

[–] Boogalow 14 years ago

Being female and 'cursed' with this thing every month, I have to tell you guys that if this were meant to be menstrual it would be at the back of the dress and not at the front. It would have been more realistic if this had been seen at the back of the dress but then that may have been too obvious.

I have been caught out by my *ahem* guilt once or twice and not having anything with me it has stained the back of clothing as I'd been sitting down and would therefore be visible at the back when I stod up. Menstrual blood would never stain at the front, and certainly not in those quantities; any woman losing that much blood would need to go to the ER.

[–] Max_Planck 14 years ago

Thank you. Good point, and point taken.

Still, I should perhaps make it clear that what I originally described as "slightly codified menstrual imagery" is not, in fact, ever intended to be an actual depiction of menstruation, or even suggest it in a realistic manner.

For instance, when Robin Wood talks of the mutilated little finger of Professor Jordan in The Thirty Nine Steps in terms of "castration", or when Tania Modleski refers to Devlin tying a scarf around Alicia's bare midriff in Notorious as "highly repressive" (of her sexuality), it should be understood that these aren't literal interpretations of these images, but what they may represent symbolically.

The image of red blood despoiling a pure white dress in the movies is, I think, similarly open to interpretation. In the case of Carrie, for instance, the connection with menstruation is incontrovertible. Blood at the back of the dress would be, as you say, too obvious. And, in cinematic terms, too prosaic.

Here's another example, from a Korean film that I haven't seen myself:

http://maktaaq.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

[–] boxerrebellion 9 years ago

I was wondering if instead of menstrual it was more an image from the loss of virginity (from this discussion, not from the film... that I just saw as 'j'accuse!'.

[–] jsk32870 7 years ago

I am with you on the general premise that Hitchcock often used imagery - for example, Marion Crane in Psycho wearing a white bra before she steals the $40k, and later on we see her in a black one. We see Marion go from 'good' to 'bad' etc.

However I am not following you on this menstruation symbolism. What exactly is that supposed to be telling us? That Hitchcock had a fear of women, and he wanted to advertise that to the world? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yes, the blood on the dress tells us about the guilt...but the blood on the dress symbolizing menstruation, and representing females in general, and Hitch is afraid of females, and he wants the world to know it......that's going a bit too far I think. I'm not sure he (A) had a fear of women like you suggest, although I will admit I'm no expert on his psychological makeup and (B) even if he did, why would he want to expose himself and reveal this fear to the viewing audience? I just don't get that.

[–] lexyladyjax 7 years ago

The dress was not white. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it was blue according to the stills and the records. The bloodstain showed that she knelt in the blood or knelt near it to scrub the skirt of the gown in the bloodstain which must have been decided prior to the strange of the body. It was wrong for the bloodstain.

The other poster is correct. Menstrual blood stains the back of garments, not the front. Never the front. Gravity always has its way with blood as with other liquids.

Bored now.

[–] winles 15 years ago

I think you could have hit on something here.
Hitchcock was always trying to push the boundaries of film making.Sometimes he got such things past the studio heads/censors,sometimes he didn't.
Usually these persons were too stupid and could not see the underlying image/message that Hitchcock was trying to pass on to us.Again some cinemagoers picked up on it,some did not.I think there were MANY who saw the point,but found it eith too distrubing or too distasteful to acknowledge.
This was their problem,NOT Hitchcock's.
Such revelations only go to show just what a cinematic genius Hitchcock was,and the fact that many present day directors still use Hitch's methods only confirms this.
There will never again be such a unique cinematic genius.

To finish a funny Hitchcock quote:~
Interviewer "Mr Hitchcock,will you ever make a comedy movie?"
Hitch:~ My good man ALL my movies are comedies!"
It's true you know.

[–] MorgieSteph 14 years ago

I think some people have been reading too many half-baked psychology books.
Thank goodness I can watch movies for the plot and acting, as well as the directing, lighting etc., and not worry about
small points "meaning" something else quite off-beat.

Bathia Mapes: "Go to the house of the curse".

[–] tupacsory-1 8 years ago

What plot ? ar beginning woman came with big spot of blood after that she goes to theather, but at the finish the guilty guy says, HE MAKES thhat spot of blood bigger AFTER woman she goes to theather, but the big spot of blood it was BEfore she goes to theater, when she came to his house!

[–] jsk32870 7 years ago

I think you missed part of the story. The entire 'flashback' scene at the beginning of the film was a lie. So when you are referencing the big spot of blood that was there before she went to the theater....you are referencing the flashback, which we find out later was a bunch of lies that Jonathan told Eve. So that's not a plot hole, but it can be confusing if you believed Jonathan's story.

[–] starrynight05 8 years ago

Thank goodness I can look for meaning and profundity in a film and not have to worry about superficial things like plot and acting. To each his own.

[–] XNtrisity 14 years ago

What really got me in the scene where he cut his hand is that he cut the palm, where the skin is much thicker and much more sensitive than the back. To produce that much blood, he'd have to cut pretty deep.

[–] onepotato2 14 years ago

What's all this talk about minstrels?

[–] marg-nicol 14 years ago

Very interesting MI in 'Stand by me' with young boys being the subject. It's the scene when the lads are swimming in the creek and are attacked by leeches.

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 13 years ago

Good post, indeed and that's nice Max. Something like this was first used in "The Rubber Tarantula Goes Down", which was a dead end play in the 1930's by long forgotten playwright Sassoon Marbre.

Time is the only true purgatory.

[–] AssetsonFire 12 years ago

It reminded me of the scene in Blue Velvet where Dorothy appears on the lawn. No menstrual blood in that scene, but something about the stance both characters had and the shock of being confronted with a distraught, damaged woman after an accident. The fact that her head was out of frame when she appeared also added to the odd feeling of the scene.