Themes And Plot Devices In The Films Of Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock's films show an interesting tendency towards recurring themes and devices, such that one can almost feel that he was in some way making the same movie, or at least telling the same story, over and over again throughout his life as a director.
Here are some of the themes that show up repeatedly in his films.
Read more about Themes And Plot Devices In The Films Of Alfred Hitchcock: Birds, Suspense, Audience As Voyeur, MacGuffin, The Ordinary Person, The Wrong Man or Wrong Woman, The Double, The Likeable Criminal, Aka The Charming Sociopath, Staircases, Food and Death, Trains, Transference of Guilt, Mothers, Brandy, Sexuality, Blonde Women, Silent Scenes, Number 13, Tennis, Falling From High Places, The Perfect Murder, Violence in A Theatre
Famous quotes containing the words themes, plot, devices, films, alfred and/or hitchcock:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The relationship between mother and professional has not been a partnership in which both work together on behalf of the child, in which the expert helps the mother achieve her own goals for her child. Instead, professionals often behave as if they alone are advocates for the child; as if they are the guardians of the child’s needs; as if the mother left to her own devices will surely damage the child and only the professional can rescue him.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)
“We all go a little mad sometimes.”
—Joseph Stefano, U.S. screenwriter, and Alfred Hitchcock. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
“I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.”
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)