A Video on Women, Intimacy, and Sexual Violence in Hitchcock Films

I like to note this from time to time:

The clips in this short film DO show men manhandling and/or killing women, or show them struggling(Stewart holding Day down in Man Who Knew Too Much; Grant struggling with Kelly in To Catch a Thief.)

But Hitchcock was "equal opportunity" in showing MEN struggling with, or being beaten by, or being killed by OTHER MEN (or women):

The killing of Gromek(Torn Curtain)
The opening strangling in Rope(with its sexual connotations)
The stabbing in the back of Louis Bernard in Man Who Knew Too Much '56
The stabbing of Arbogast
The poker bludgeoning of the sailor in Marnie
Willy kills Gus in Lifeboat; the others kill Willy
Grace Kelly stabs Swan to death in Dial M(foiling his rape-like near- strangling of HER)


We also have the struggles of Robert Cummings versus Norman Lloyd in the back of the radio van in Saboteur; of Farley Granger and Robert Walker on the carousel in Strangers on a Train; of Cary Grant versus Vandamm's henchmen in Glen Cove in NXNW,

My point here is that you could assemble four minutes of MEN being manhandled and violently murdered in Hitchcock movies, and I think this militates against him being solely a tormentor of women on the screen. Though Frenzy -- with nothing but female sex victims -- sure feels bad in this regard. (Psycho, as a "save," shows a man getting killed, too.)

Meanwhile, back at this (fine) short film: the shot of Norman Bates in the cell seems "thrown in" -- I don't get its relevance to the treatment of women beyond, well, how Norman Bates treats women(badly.)

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Interesting how the actual stranglings of Miriam and Brenda are then intercut with the "non-lethal" stranglings of men briefly grabbing their women by the neck(Stewart/Novak in Vertigo) or menacingly putting the hand around the neck from behind(Mason/Saint in NXNW).)

It's startling how scenes and shots across different Hitch films *do* play and feel the same ways (so they can all be smoothly cut together like they're all from one big movie). Despite using different editors & camera people, and constantly innovating, Hitchcock was good enough at communicating exactly what he wanted so almost every time the same distinctive combinations of framing, camera movement and focus-pulling, and ultimately cutting recur over and over. While it's not important that every director has a distinctive style like this, I do in fact feel a little sorry for those who don't. More importantly I truly pity people like J.J. Abrams whose scenes have no shape & whose shots and cutting etc. have no discernable logic whatsoever.

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Another look at it, a few more thoughts:

I'd forgotten how rather long and passionate the SOLE kiss in The Birds was -- Tippi kisses Rod and it lasts longer than I'd remembered(I'd remembered "a peck.") Alas, The Birds allows for no more such romantic passion once the birds take over completely (but then, the horror of Psycho allows only for a more lengthy kissing scene right up front.)

There's an interesting roundelay of shots of MEN looking somewhat discomfited -- Connery in Marnie(having stripped Marnie of her nightgown); Stewart in Rear Window(watching Thorwald attack Kelly), Walker in Strangers on a Train(in his trance as he nearly strangles a dowager at a party), and, weirdly enough, Rusk("going all gooney" in his attack on Brenda.) Some sort of statement here, no doubt, I'm just not sure what it is./

I would add that Marnie and Frenzy have always been linked in the Hitchcock canon as the two times Hitch actually got to portray rape on the screen. Its all rather implied and "cut off" in the late Hays Code Marnie. More graphic in Frenzy, but not really -- the camera stays on Brenda's face for much of it(and, we learn later, Rusk couldn't perform.) Still, those are the two movies where the sex got overt rather than covert -- and not loving at all.

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While it is my contention that thriller-maker Hitchcock showed scenes of violence towards and murders of men as often -- likely MORE often than towards women(hey, how about the diplomat bloodily shot in the face, Arbogast-style in Foreign Correspondent?), there can be no doubt that his willingness to even SHOW such violence towards women(particularly in Strangers on a Train, Psycho, Marnie and Frenzy) makes for a discomfiting view of the man and his vision. Hitchcock was a big, BIG success as a commercial filmmaker, and he sure seems to have understood that audiences dug on the sex and violence he was selling.

But also..all that romance. All those kisses. All those happy romantic endings.

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