Themes and Plot Devices in The Films of Alfred Hitchcock

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 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)

    James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.”
    James Thurber (1894–1961)

    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.)

    Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn’t be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore and I think that’s very important.
    Mae West (1892–1980)

    I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.
    —Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)