Just in Hitchcock movies.
In 1963.
PS. People stalk people to develop relationships, all the time. Men follow women. Women follow men. Its usually innocent and simply meant to develop intelligence on the "intended beloved" and to see when and how a later meeting can take place. If the target IS interested...this is courtship and love(or at least seduction and sex.)
If the target is NOT interested -- its stalking.
It isn't stalking in the criminal sense if he is perfectly open to her advances.
shareI think her behavior would have been considered ubladylike and unseemly in 1963, possibly scandalous. Ladies weren't supposed to chase men, they were supposed to get the man to do the chasing!
I think Melanie was supposed to come off as a bif "off", a bit desperate and lonely.
This-- and also, she saw Mitch as a challenge since he was rather playing hard to get. She was used to wrapping men around her finger.
shareShe was used to wrapping men around her finger.
She was young, beautiful, an easy lay, and she had a great car!
Not many straight men are picky enough to turn that down.
I like that thing she does with her lips.
shareShe was young, attractive in a bland, sexless way, humorless, lacking much personality, and had a great car. If she was an easy lay I wouldn't have turned her down, but I'd have had my eye on Annie.
shareThat's the thing about Suzanbe Pleschette. She was really beautiful, but her personality was so strong that her beauty was never the most important thing about her!
Annie is vastly more appealing than the bland and weak Melanie, but well. Whst straight man would turn down a Melanie.
This-- and also, she saw Mitch as a challenge since he was rather playing hard to get.
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And I'd say ...on the basis of their "meet cute"(?) in the bird shop(a BIRD shop?!) that he was also playing...mean, hateful, punishing, sadistic, angry...just listen to that scene some time!
Screenwriter Evan Hunter said that he and Hitchcock were aiming for a "Rock Hudson/Doris Day meet cute" scene, but Mitch is really much MEANER than that. And the scene isn't quite well written enough either. I buy how he keeps asking her questions she can't answer or lies about(he is, after all a courtroom lawyer) but once he reveals "the gag," he just turns NASTY on her.
That's a "meet cute in Hitchcock World," I guess.
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She was used to wrapping men around her finger
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I just realized..that's pretty much the set-up in Marnie a year(and Hitchocck movie) l later.
In that one, Sean Connery is rich, handsome, macho, single -- and Tippi Hedren keeps rejecting him. Its like a red cape to a bull...Sean goes for the gold.
This all rather harkens back to the love story in Notorous with mean Cary Grant being mean and nasty to Ingrid Bergman for most of the movie. This exchange, early on:
Ingrid: This is a strange love affair.
Grant: Why?
Ingrid: Maybe because you hate me.