: Study Questions: Week One

Hitchcock and the Visual Medium

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Notorious (1946)

Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious 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 espionage 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.

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?

Notorious: The Enemy Without

1. What does the opening scene, without ever saying so directly, establish about Alicia (Ingrid Bergman)? How does the mise-en-scene express her character, her relationships with men, and her regret?

2. What sort of a person is Devlin Cary Grant)? Why is he so ambivalent toward Alicia? How does his profession define his character?

3. As the film develops, what do you see as the more important aspect of the narrative, the pursuit of the Nazi plotters or the relations between the central characters: Devlin and Alicia, Alicia and Sebastian (Claude Rains), Sebastian and his mother?

4. In the scenes which bring together Devlin and his bosses in the intelligence service, how are his superiors presented. How does the film want us to judge them, and what techniques, especially mise-en-scene, does Hitchcock use to make them seen rather unattractive?

5. Where, specifically does Hitchcock use odd camera angles, long tracking and zoom shots to create a mood of anxiety and and tension? Think of the scene at Sebastian's ball where the camera descends from overhead, follows Alicia, and zooms in to show the key in her hand. Or the tracking shot of Sebastian heading upstairs after discovering Alicia and Devlin have found the bottles of Uranium.

6. Why would you think twice about keeping uranium in wine bottles? What does Hitchcock's cavalier treatment of radioactive material tell us about his concept of the "McGuffin" ?

7. How does the scene in which Sebastian's mother lights up a cigarette reveal a new and very unpleasant side of her character? Watch for variations of this type of mother in the rest of Hitchcock's films.

8. How does the fate of Emil reveal the nature of the Nazi plotters and foreshadow the fate of Sebastian and his mother?

9. In what ways might Devlin and Alicia be seen as trapped between two organizations or institutions which are equally indifferent to the humanity of their agents?

10. In Hitchcock's films the excitement does not arise from the gradual uncovering of a mysterious secret (i.e. the identity of a murderer or the activities of enemy agents), because the secret is revealed early in the narrative. Rather it arises from the influence of that secret on the lives of the central characters as it threatens to destroy the stability of their lives. In what ways, exactly, is this idea exemplified in Notorious (and Shadow of a Doubt)?