: Study Questions: Week One

Hitchcock and the Visual Medium

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Psycho (1960)

Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho offer a good introduction both to Hitchcock's distinctive style and to the way in which Hollywood films encode the social and ideological conventions of the culture which produced them. Shadow of a Doubt uses the genre conventions of the melodrama as a vehicle for many of Hitchcock's recurring themes: family discord, repressed emotions (especially sexual), murderous impulses, and entrapped heroes and heroines. Notorious uses the conventions of the horror film to develop many of the same themes. What we want to look for in these films are the common themes and the filmic techniques employed by the director to express them.

Psycho exemplifies the recurrance of certain images and themes we will encounter in Hitchcock's other films: i.e.the destructive influences of mothers on their sons, attaching sinister qualities to familiar and harmless objects, and the dangers of sexual desire.

Shadow of a Doubt: Dark Shadows in the American Heartland

1. Consider the images which dominate the opening sequence (before Uncle Charlie pays the Newton family a visit). What part of America forms the setting? What is the significance of the scenes of industrial rubble surrounding Uncle Charlie's apartment? What is the significance of the overlapping shots of a costume ball with the soundtrack deliberately distorted by slowing it down?

2. What do the sequence of images and the sound track tell us to expect of Santa Rosa. Is this a red herring?

3. What is the first image of Uncle Charlie? Where is he, and what is he doing? What is the first image of Charlie Newton? Where is she, and what is she doing? What is her complaint about life in the Newton family of Santa Rosa?

4. Does the behavior of Charlie's parents tend to support her judgment? Does Hitchcock elicit admiration for them or seem to satirize them? What about young Ann? Is she to be taken as the Hollywood "bright child" or as a little pain-in-the-neck?

5. How does the arrival of Jack Graham set up Charlie's crucial moral dilemma?

6. Charlie repeatedly claims that she knows what goes on inside her Uncle. What is the irony here, and how does that irony cast doubts on her romantic dreams?

7. How convincing is the explanation that a childhood accident turned Uncle Charlie toward cynicism, misogyny, and rage? Could the film suggest other possible explanations (consider the relationship with his sister who calls him "the baby").

8. Uncle Charlie spends dinner recounting his glamorous past and then hands out presents. Where do these presents come from, and how do they serve as an ironic comment on the way the naive Newtons (and especially Charlie) judge their relative? Would knowing that Joseph Cotten was known for his roles of gracious, upright, noble heroes have an influence on your reaction to Uncle Charlie in this film?

9. What is the thematic (and plot) significance of Herbie Hawkins? What does his obsession with tales of murder say about the nature of experience gotten vicariously or at secondhand? In what ways might his fanciful conversations with Joseph Newton be said to parallel Charlie's dreams of her uncle changing the lives of the family?

10. Is there some sort of psychic connection between the two Charlies, who are often described as twins or doubles? What is the thematic significance of this doubling? Is this a familiar motif in Hitchcock's films you have seen?

11. Jack Graham arrives presenting himself as a reporter interviewing "representative American families". How many levels of irony and deception can you find in this apparent dishonesty?

12. When Charlie realizes that Jack's a detective, he insists that she trust him and keep her "mouth shut." Why does she agree? What burden must she take on herself to protect the feelings and reputation of her family?

13. How does her Uncle's plea to give him a "last chance" force Charlie to become even more morally compromised?

14. When Charlie says to her Uncle. "Go away, or I'll kill you myself," she seems to have understood secrets that she never knew existed at the beginning of the film. How will her knowledge forever separate her from her family?

15. A rather pompous clergyman appears several times in the film, and in the final scene he can be heard eulogizing Uncle Charlie after the death all but Charlie believe to be a terrible accident. How does this ironic moment, comment on the innocence promised in the sequence that introduces us to Santa Rosa?

Psycho: Mother's Not Herself Today.

1. What is the significance of the long tracking shot which opens the film? How does it transform the viewer into a voyeur?

2. How does Marion Crane's (Janet Leigh) encounter with the braggart Cassidy (Frank Albertson) in her boss's office make her decide to steal the money and flee?

3. How could Marion's desire to escape her dreary surroundings be regarded as the prime cause of her death? What does it suggest about the consequences of rejecting conventional (and moral) behavior?

4. What is the significance of the policeman in the reflecting sun glasses? Why does he seem so sinister? Is he a projection of Marion's guilt?

5. List three good reasons why YOU would never have stopped at the Bates Motel.

6. How is the decor of the motel office associated with the action of the film and with Marion's name?

7. Tony Perkins, who would forever be Norman Bates after this film, had previously been cast as a rather naive and sensitive young man. How did casting him against type add to the character of Norman?

8. What was the dramatic effect of having the film's star murdered only a third of the way through the film?

9. In what ways is the character of Norman's mother anticipated in Young Charlie's mother in Shadow of a Doubt ?

10. In what ways does the film reflect the popularity of Freud's theories in the 1950s? Is the psychiatrist's explanation of Norman's behavior to be taken seriously or ironically? How does the final images of Norman in a straitjacket and Marion's car emerging from the swamp suggest the mystery has not been solved?