Themes, Plot Devices and Motifs
Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense, the audience as voyeur, and his well-known "MacGuffin," a plot device that is essential to the characters on the screen, but is irrelevant to the audience. Thus, the MacGuffin was always hazily described (in "North By Northwest," Leo G. Carroll describes James Mason as an "importer-exporter.")
Read more about this topic: Alfred Hitchcock
Famous quotes containing the words plot, devices and/or motifs:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The gods being always close to men perceive those who afflict others with unjust devices and do not fear the wrath of heaven.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)