Introduction
Alfred
Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Suspicion, and Notorious each demonstrate a cinematic style archetypal to the suspense
thriller genre. Through his mastery of point-of-view, tone, symbolic objects,
and camera movement, Hitchcock creates influential and timeless films. These
three movies and their unique cinematic qualities also influenced my thesis
film: a suspense thriller entitled Magnolia
Kane.
Rebecca
“Last
night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” The famous opening line that begins
the novel Rebecca also opens the film
adaptation. Released in 1940, Rebecca
is adapted from the best selling novel by Daphne Du Maurier. The movie is an
influential thriller that remains popular today. The film’s point-of-view is
not through Rebecca, but a character known only as Mrs. de Winter. Portrayed by
emerging actress Joan Fontaine, her character arouses curiosity, terror, romance
and aggression in a riveting, Oscar-nominated performance.
Her
point-of-view is introduced through the eyes of an insecure, awkward young
woman employed as a personal assistant to a wealthy dowager vacationing in
Monte Carlo. Fontaine brings a quiet innocence to the character, perfectly
suited for these early scenes. When she meets the aristocratic, widowed Maxim
de Winter (Laurence Olivier), she immediately falls in love despite their
differences in age and class. As they become acquainted, her romantic optimism
is counter-balanced by the darker murmurings she learns about Mr. de Winter and
his late wife Rebecca. During a restless night’s sleep she imagines gossiping
voices: “She was the beautiful Rebecca Hildreth, you know. They say he simply
adored her. I suppose he just can’t get over his wife’s death. But he’s a
broken man.” This plants the seeds of doubt within her mind and aligns her
point-of-view with the audience. She may be in over her head, yet she also
worries that Maxim de Winter is mentally unstable.
The tone in Rebecca’s thirty minute Act One is
romantic despite the hints at darker themes. Hitchcock approached this first
act with the intent of differentiating it from what follows. In Leonard J.
Leff’s book Hitchcock and Selznick,
the director addresses the establishing tone when he says, “I feel unless we do
something like this our scenes in the house will not have the dramatic kicks
that they should have, because visually we shall be unable to show any change
in the girl.”
The
lighting, therefore, in the first act is much brighter, showcasing an
optimistic tone. The characters’ wardrobe is also different. The future Mrs. de
Winter wears white in almost every instance, emphasizing her character as the
epitome of young and innocent. In the remainder of the film, taking place at
the house known as Manderley, the tone darkens, as shadows and blacks dominate
the color palette.
The tone
shift begins in Act Two as the newly married Mr. and Mrs. de Winter arrive home
to Manderley. The weather immediately changes to rain, setting the stage for
darker events. The estate of Manderley is an imaginative display of expressive
production design. With a brooding stone exterior of asymmetrical angles, the
mansion is equally intimidating on the inside. Mrs. de Winter appears small and
insignificant amidst the massive doors, staircases and cavernous rooms. In one
symbolic composition she stands in front of an enormous fireplace that appears
ready to swallow her whole.
This
menacing tone continues when Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) is introduced as
the main antagonist to Mrs. de Winter, terrorizing her with constant
comparisons to Rebecca. In one early scene, Mrs. Danvers presents Mrs. de
Winter to Rebecca’s old bedroom. To emphasize the psychological haunting and
trauma that Mrs. de Winter feels, Alfred Hitchcock creates an eerie atmosphere.
Mrs. Danvers moves in and out of shafts of light cutting through the sheer
curtains. She becomes a shadow, partially obscured in darkness – despite the
action taking place in the middle of the day.
In one of
his many interviews with the French director Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock
discussed this moment. He said, “Mrs. Danvers was almost never seen walking and
was rarely shown in motion. If she entered a room in which the heroine was,
what happened is that the girl suddenly heard a sound and there was the
ever-present Mrs. Danvers, standing perfectly still by her side. In this way
the whole situation was projected from the heroine’s point of view; she never
knew when Mrs. Danvers might turn up, and this, in itself, was terrifying. To
have shown Mrs. Danvers walking about would have to humanize her.”
Another
striking display of tone occurs when Mr. and Mrs. de Winter watch home movies.
With a film projector flickering images in the background, the room is cast in
light and shadow. Even the soundtrack is grating, due to the projector’s
repetitive sound. Mrs. de Winter, however, is more concerned with her husband.
Feeling insecure amidst the looming presence of Rebecca, Mrs. de Winter changes
her physical appearance. She coifs her hair and dons a more glamorous dress
hoping to impress her husband. He does not notice. She feels helpless. She
loses her grip on reality. She, and the audience, believes that Maxim is still
in love with his dead wife Rebecca.
Hitchcock’s
use of objects is an essential visual component throughout the film. The new
Mrs. de Winter sees signs of Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter, everywhere
throughout Manderley. Rebecca’s clothes still hang in her old closet. Rebecca’s
monogrammed stationary and address book fill her old desk, emblazoned with the
visually striking, scripted ‘R.’ When asked about Rebecca, the house manager
describes her as “the most beautiful creature I ever saw.” Maxim de Winter
attempts to move on with his new life and does not speak of Rebecca. The one
character keeping Rebecca’s memory alive is the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers – a
raven-clad figure of menace and intimidation.
The film
concludes with a very dramatic and cinematic finale, highlighted by the
importance of expressive objects. Upon learning the secret that Rebecca had
cancer and took her own life, Mrs. Danvers loses all grip on reality. She
decides to burn down Manderley and eradicate all memory of Rebecca. In a scene
that prefigures a shot discussed below in Suspicion,
Mrs. Danvers carries an illuminated candle through the dark house. She uses the candle to start a raging
fire that spreads across the estate and engulfs the mansion in flames. With
fire burning all around, Hitchcock pushes in on Mrs. Danvers’s face displaying
the countenance of an unhinged madwoman. In the film’s final shot, the camera
tracks in on the flames to reveal one burning object: Rebecca’s distinctively
scripted monogrammed ‘R.’ This shot will be echoed one year later at the
conclusion of Citizen Kane, as that
movie famously concludes with the burning of a single biographical heirloom.
Hitchcock’s
many motivated camera movements equally establish Rebecca’s suspenseful style. Act One concludes with a scene where
the future Mrs. de Winter reveals to her employer that she and Maxim are to be
married. Hitchcock visually depicts her psychological state in a highly
creative manner. In one of the movie’s first cinematic flourishes, the camera
tracks away from her. She recedes in the frame, composed amongst the hotel
room’s furnishings. Her image shrinks as she hears a warning about her new
life. This transitional moment also serves as foreshadowing the difficulties of
her new role in Manderley with the soon to be encountered Mrs. Danvers.
Is her
paranoia justified? It is Hitchcock’s brilliant camera moves that keeps the
viewer captivated. The film’s overall style darkens throughout Act Two and
culminates in the fourteen-minute boathouse sequence between Mr. and Mrs. de
Winter. On the surface, this Act Two Climax is a long dialogue scene featuring
revelatory exposition. As Maxim tells the true story of Rebecca’s death, he
also reveals his disdain for Rebecca. Hitchcock approaches this material in a
unique fashion: neither showing a flashback, nor focusing on either character’s
face. Instead, the camera drifts across the room. It pans to important symbols
that subliminally recall the events of Maxim’s tale. Serving as a visual
recreation of Rebecca’s final moments, this technique helps the audience
believe Maxim’s story. It builds sympathy for him and liberates the new Mrs. de
Winter from Rebecca’s ghost. Leonard Leff writes about this scene as a
significant struggle Hitchcock encountered while adapting the source material
to the big screen. He writes, “Hitchcock intended the effect to differ from the
“old fashioned ‘flash back,’” and it does, for it dramatizes not the incident
but a refraction of it in space and time. As scripted or even filmed, the scene
might or might not have worked; it nonetheless represented Hitchcock’s attempt
to advance beyond a conventional mise-en-scène in a work that appeared somewhat
resistant to cinematic treatment.”
Shortly
following this confession, Act Two concludes with a vital exchange between Mr.
and Mrs. de Winter. Flush with new knowledge about her husband’s true feelings,
she is now older and wiser. She wears black, standing on equal footing with
Maxim. Hitchcock uses a long take where Maxim acknowledges the new maturity in
his wife. Finally, they kiss and the camera pulls back to show them locked
together. This Act Two Climax differs greatly from the above mentioned Act One
Climax where the camera pulls back to show Mrs. de Winter alone and isolated.
She is no longer solitary or afraid. She has overcome her obstacles and has
blossomed.
Rebecca continues to influence many contemporary films. One recent
example is Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.
Released in 2010, Black Swan features
Natalie Portman in an Oscar-winning portrayal of an unhinged ballerina who or
may or may not be terrorized by a rival dancer. Rebecca is also influential on my thesis film: Magnolia
Kane. The plot focuses on a character haunted by her lover’s previous wife.
The style of several scenes will be replicated, including the use of sheer
draperies to obscure characters. Similarly, the isolation of the protagonist
within the frame, composing her to appear small and threatened within a large
house will be a visual device employed throughout the film. Finally, the use of
objects or “things” will be central to the story. As in many of Hitchcock’s
films, objects play a central role within Rebecca.
Leonard Leff refers to this when he says, “’Things’ still predominate, from the
telephone in the cottage and the bones of a cold piece of chicken to Manderley
itself. But unlike thirties Hitchcock, the Rebecca
screenplay links the cool, stable surfaces of ‘things’ to the perturbed
characters’ desires and fears.”
In Magnolia Kane, such “things”
connected to characters’ motives include garden shears, a condiment knife, and
an antique tea set.
Suspicion
Suspicion is a classic thriller once
again dominated by a captivating Joan Fontaine. Her performance this time,
however, proved to be an Oscar-winner. Released one year after Rebecca, Suspicion tells a similar tale of a timid woman whose sensational
imagination overpowers her reason. It is told through a subjective technique,
where all scenes and actions are shown from the main character’s point-of-view.
Hitchcock
continuously embraced the subjective technique. He compared it with objective
shooting in his 1972 interview with Charles Thomas Samuels. He said, “The
objective treatment, however, is also used when necessary; but for me, the
objective is merely an extension of the theater because you are a viewer of the
events that take place in front of you, but you are not necessarily in the mind
of the person. Subjective shooting puts the audience in the mind of the
character.”
Suspicion’s subjectivity centers on Lina Aysgarth, a
woman who falls in love, marries, and soon fears a potentially murderous
husband. Lina is introduced as an intelligent, independent woman. When she
meets handsome playboy Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) she throws caution to the
wind and begins a relationship with the charming, yet constantly broke Johnnie.
Lina’s father depicts Johnnie as “wild” with a notorious reputation for
cheating at cards. When Lina overhears her father describing her as having
“intellect and fine-solid character,” Lina rebels and immediately kisses
Johnnie after previously rejecting him. Lina succumbs to her passion rather
than the common sense and wisdom of her family.
Much of Suspicion’s point-of-view is filtered
through Lina’s overactive imagination. As the film progresses, Lina and Johnnie
get married, yet his strange behavior continues. Lina at first ignores the
compounding fears when Johnnie loses his job, lies about it, and amasses large
gambling debts. It becomes more
certain, through facts and witnesses, that Johnnie is undeniably a broke
gambling addict. Lina even decides to leave him and writes a farewell letter.
Yet she still loves him and admits, “I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried.”
Aside from the financial concerns, Johnnie does not threaten Lina in any
dangerous way. She decides to stay by his side and help him persevere. The
turning point occurs when Johnnie enters into a real estate development deal
with his friend Beaky as a scheme to pay off his debts. Lina quickly sees
Johnnie’s true intention, which prompts Johnnie to caution her to not meddle in
his affairs. Lina’s imagination again becomes overactive and she continues
suspecting Johnnie of wicked intentions. Ultimately, in the film’s final scene,
Johnnie explains that he never wanted to hurt Lina and, if anything, would only
harm himself. Whether he is to be believed or not, the movie ends with Lina’s
point-of-view that all is well. They drive off together with Lina, and the
audience, no longer suspicious of Johnnie.
The
suspenseful and menacing tone is established early in the story. Lina and
Johnnie’s first date is presented in a classic Hitchcockian fashion, framing
the shot in a misleading composition where the viewer sees a potentially
violent act. The couple stands atop a hill during a windy day. The music swells
in a dramatic climax. The couple struggles. Their tussle is not violent, but
rather Johnnie’s attempt at a kiss. Lina also suspects a nefarious motive as
she fights off his advances. Johnnie replies with a telling line, reflecting
the audience: “Now what did you think I was trying to do: kill you? Nothing
less than murder could justify such violent self-defense.” This sets the tone for the entire story
where Lina never knows for certain about Johnnie’s true motivation.
Soon after
this moment, Beaky is mysteriously killed. Lina considers Johnnie as the prime
suspect. The tone turns darker as Lina believes Johnnie of not only murdering
his friend, but also plotting her own murder. Lina learns that Johnnie inquired
about her life insurance policy. This detail is open-ended, yet allows Lina to
infer murderous intent.
This
apprehensive tone is brilliantly illustrated through the mise-en-scène at a
dinner party. Lina and Johnnie sit around a table with a famous mystery author,
and Johnnie and Lina are framed on opposite ends. They discuss a novel where
the murderer uses an untraceable poison. Johnnie shows avid interest in the
topic, openly discussing poison and the possible happiness of murderers. This
contributes to Lina’s deepening fear, which culminates in a subsequent
conversation with the author. At this point, the author confides to Lina that
Johnnie has been pestering the author for secrets about murders and
motivations, most of which center on the untraceable poison.
Hitchcock
employs many symbolic objects as visual clues that help Lina suspect Johnnie.
In one pivotal scene during a game of Anagrams (Scrabble), Lina focuses on the
tiles to construct the words “doubt” and “murder.” As Lina’s gaze drifts from
her spelling of “murder” to Johnnie’s face to a picture of the cliff-side
location of the real estate deal, Lina has her one and only hallucination.
These objects trigger a vision of Johnnie murdering Beaky by pushing him off
the cliff. As she imagines Beaky
falling to his death, Lina panics and faints.
The
film’s climax features one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most signature shots – which
also involves a creative depiction of an everyday object. While Lina is sick in
bed, Johnnie carries a glass of milk up to her room. Hitchcock creates the
suspicion that the milk is poisoned. To draw attention to the glass, he devised
an intricate visual trick. He told Truffaut, “I put a light right inside the
glass because I wanted it to be luminous. Cary Grant’s walking up the stairs
and everyone’s attention had to be focused on that glass.”
This object, lighted in a hyper-real style, adds a haunting, eerie presence
that heightens the tension.
Suspicion’s important camera moves are reserved for
the most climatic scenes. Once again, the moment Johnnie carries the glass of milk
represents the story’s highest point of suspense. The camera sweeps up the
stairs in an excellent use of motivated movement. As stated above, Johnnie is
shrouded in darkness and the glass is illuminated in bright white light. This
builds the suspense as the camera moves up the stairs with Johnnie. The
viewer’s attention focuses on the milk, linking it to the untraceable poison
mentioned earlier. At this moment Lina completely surrenders to the idea of her
husband’s murderous intent. She refuses to touch the milk, and is never known
for sure whether it was poisoned or not.
Suspicion has inspired countless wife-in-peril
thrillers. A most recent example is David Fincher’s Gone Girl. Released in 2014, Gone
Girl is lead by Rosamund Pike’s Oscar-nominated performance as the
terrified yet deceptive wife. Her husband, played by Ben Affleck, is portrayed
as a lying, cheating character most likely to have murdered his wife. The plot,
however, spins a tangled web of surprises and deceptions. For Magnolia Kane, Suspicion is influential in many areas. The unreliable lover,
framed in a dominating manner will plant doubt within the audience. The
subjective point-of-view, showing each event through the protagonist’s
perspective, is also Magnolia Kane’s
point-of-view. Finally, the prominent use of “things” to link the psychological
to the visual will once again be magnified. Unlike the glass of milk that
proved to be harmless, the antiques in Magnolia
Kane will be more impactful.
Notorious
In
Notorious, Ingrid Bergman’s portrayal
of Alicia Huberman is a complex display of confidence and fear that remains
mesmerizing after seventy years. Released in 1946, the movie is an intricate
tapestry of undercover agents and sexual betrayal set in the period immediately
following World War II. The film uses an objective point-of-view, yet the
emphasis is Bergman’s Alicia. She is introduced as the American daughter of a
German spy. Unlike the Joan Fontaine characters, Alicia is a confident
socialite. A risk-taker with a penchant for men and drinking, Alicia is also a
strong independent woman. Most significantly, she takes an anti-Nazi, patriotic
stance against her own father. This builds sympathy and establishes her as the
clear protagonist.
The central plot begins almost
exclusively through Alicia’s point-of-view when she meets the American
government agent Devlin (Cary Grant). He recruits her to help infiltrate a ring
of ex-Nazis regrouping in South America, but before the mission starts, Alicia
and Devlin fall in love. Unfortunately, the blissful times end at the Act One
climax when Devlin tells Alicia about her new assignment: she must use sex as a
weapon to win the trust of Alexander Sebastian – a high-ranking ex-Nazi who
happens to be Alicia’s former-lover. The plot shifts and Alicia must now play a
new role. She needs to be a convincing actress on a high-stakes stage of
international espionage. Alicia cannot raise suspicions as she needs to
permanently stay in character. When Sebastian proposes marriage, Alicia first
consults Devlin for one final appeal for his love.
Sebastian’s
discovery that Alicia and Devlin are collaborating leads to a dramatic shift in
the story, where the viewer now sees events from Sebastian’s point-of-view.
Hitchcock focuses exclusively on Sebastian, telling the story through his
actions. He faces an imperative decision: what to do with the woman he loves.
The suspense builds as the audience learns that Sebastian suspects Alicia, yet
she is unaware of his discovery. As Act Two reaches its climax, Alicia is not
shown. She remains off-screen for nearly six-and-a-half minutes. To build
tension, Hitchcock instead shows the antagonists plotting against her. Unlike Suspicion, the protagonist is actually
poisoned. This results in an exciting Act Three where Alicia slowly descends
into certain death. The perspective shifts several times throughout the final
act as the viewer sees the story from Devlin, Alicia, and in the film’s
thrilling finale, Sebastian as he meets his fate.
The tone
in Act One is conveyed through sexually-charged scenes including an infamous
moment between Alicia and Devlin that has been described as the longest kiss in
screen history. This climactic
reveal is loaded with unspoken feelings between Alicia and Devlin as neither
one admits the truth. Devlin will not confess his love for her, allowing Alicia
to give herself to another man. Alicia does not refuse the mission, accepting
the role of sexual-spy. Because neither character concedes their true feelings,
they each wound the other, setting Alicia on a dangerous, life-threatening
course.
The
suspenseful tone builds as Devlin searches Sebastian’s house while he knows
that he could be discovered. When Devlin explores the wine cellar, he slowly
nudges a wine bottle. The audience sees a close-up of the bottle teetering near
the shelf’s edge. It finally shatters in an explosive, cacophonous burst. This
shock is not used for cheap surprise; it is a crucial plot point that all
characters need to either discover or protect. Inside the bottle is not wine,
but Uranium Ore – a Cold War threat that elevates Alicia’s mission to one of
global importance.
As
Sebastian decides to confess to his mother, Hitchcock composes a very similar
shot from Suspicion. Sebastian’s
shadow appears in a lighted doorway. He then enters and slowly ascends the
grand staircase. This is virtually the identical shot from Suspicion when Johnnie carries the glass of milk; both shots set
the atmospheric tone for the approaching climax.
Once
again, Hitchcock emphasizes many symbolic objects throughout Notorious. Near the Act One climax, a
champagne bottle represents the lost love between Alicia and Devlin. It is the
physical representation of their affection. It is shown in a before-and-after
moment when Devlin buys champagne for a special night, yet forgets it at the
government office when his superiors recruit Alicia for the mission. In that
instant their love is broken and the central plot’s stakes are raised.
Next, an
important wine bottle contains Sebastian’s hidden Nazi secret. It is first
introduced at a dinner party when one of Sebastian’s cohorts panics in its
presence. That same bottle then reveals the secret that Alicia is risking her
life to learn. When Sebastian discovers its shattered remains, he literally
pieces together the clues about Alicia and Devlin. This leads to his decision
to poison Alicia.
The wine
cellar key is the central object throughout Act Two. It becomes Alicia’s focal
point and the mechanism to transfer her allegiance from Sebastian to Devlin. By
taking an enormous risk and stealing it from her husband to give to Devlin, she
shows her inner strength and true character. When she fails to return it to
Sebastian’s key ring before he notices, the key serves as the final linchpin
for Sebastian to turn against her.
After
Sebastian decides to murder Alicia, a coffee cup becomes the main object of
attention. The distinctive shape of the cup and saucer is shown in the
foreground in several pivotal scenes representing the poison and Alicia’s slow
death. Through framing and focus, the coffee cup repeatedly occupies a central
place within the frame through the beginning of Act Three. Ultimately it is the
coffee cup that reveals the poison to Alicia when Dr. Anderson almost drinks
from her cup. Alicia notices as Sebastian and his mother overreact to stop him.
Each of
these essential objects are photographed prominently in the frame, exaggerated
and highlighted. Yet these objects and their appearance only support the story,
which Hitchcock referred to as straightforward. He told Truffaut, “Notorious was simply the story of a man
in love with a girl who, in the course of her official duties, had to go to bed
with another man and even had to marry him. That’s the story.”
Another
stylistic breakthrough in Notorious
is Alfred Hitchcock’s fluid camera movements. Trademarks throughout his early
films, several long-takes are featured here to highlight significant dramatic
shifts. First is the very critical marriage proposal scene, where he covers the
action with two single shots between Alicia and Devlin – despite the presence
of other characters. In his interview with Truffaut, Hitchcock highlighted the
importance of showing only their dialogue and reaction, rather than building
the suspense of whether she will say yes or no. He says, “It has nothing to do
with the scene; the public can simply assume that the marriage will take place.
I deliberately left what appears to be the important emotional factor aside. .
.The thing that really matters is that, against all expectations, the man she’s
spying on has just asked her to marry him.”
Thus the director frames both characters in isolation for the scene’s duration.
Next is
the scene between Sebastian and his mother immediately following the marriage
proposal. This long take is the first time Sebastian’s perspective is
highlighted without Alicia. In a
low-angle two-shot, Sebastian attempts to convince his skeptical mother to
trust Alicia. The camera follows the entire conversation as Sebastian starts at
one end of the room, crosses over then exits, all while his mother remains
seated in the foreground – foreshadowing the power she will ultimately wield
over Alicia’s fate.
One of Notorious’s most brilliant sequences
occurs at a party thrown by the newlyweds. Alicia uses this opportunity to
invite Devlin into her home to uncover Sebastian’s secrets. This sets the stage
for a crucial, pressure-packed exchange. Alicia has stolen the key to
Sebastian’s wine cellar and plans to give it to Devlin. It begins with a
high-angle, long swooping shot of the party taken from an upstairs vantage. The
camera booms down into the crowd, onto Alicia and Sebastian, and continues into
a close-up of the wine cellar key in Alicia’s hand. Hitchcock explains this
scene’s significance to Truffaut: “There again we’ve substituted the language
of the camera for dialogue. In Notorious
that sweeping movement of the camera is making a statement. What it’s saying
is: ‘There’s a large reception being held in this house, but there is a drama
here which no one is aware of, and at the core of that drama is this tiny
object, this key.’”
The
excellent use of camera movement continues in the final bedroom scene between
Devlin and Alicia. As he saves her from poisoning, Devlin finally confesses his
true love. In yet another “long kiss,” Hitchcock covers the three-and-a-half
minutes in three long takes, always keeping both characters in frame within the
shot – unlike the singles during the marriage proposal outlined above. At this
climactic instance, Hitchcock moves the characters from the bed, across the
room, and then out the door all within a series of fluid camera moves.
The final
cinematic movement appropriately concludes the movie. It is a tense,
suspenseful moment as Sebastian’s fate is sealed. Once again, the perspective
has shifted back to Sebastian. Devlin and Alicia have driven away, and
Sebastian is left to explain to his German partners. More importantly, he must
suffer the consequences which are left to the viewer’s imagination. The shot
begins with Sebastian standing in a close-up. As he slowly turns and walks
away, the camera remains stationary. It then tracks behind him as he walks up
the steps and back to his house. He disappears within. In a spectacular end to
the film, the camera continues moving forward until the front door closes and
the film ends.
With its
visual panache and psychosexual themes, Notorious
has influenced many films including David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Released in 2001, it featured a star-making
performance by Naomi Watts as a struggling actress caught in the deceptive and
depraved underbelly of Hollywood. Instead of secret agents, the characters in Mulholland Drive deceive rivals through
show business dreams and illusions. While misleading others, they find they are
also deceiving themselves – a left-turn from Notorious where the characters’ deceptions redeem themselves. Notorious has inspired Magnolia Kane through several ways
including the use of poison as the murder method. More significantly, the
overall story’s depiction of a female protagonist acting a role in a dangerous
high-stakes game. This theme was a considerable factor in the development of Magnolia Kane and it likewise attracted
Hitchcock to the original material. Leonard Leff quotes Selznick International
executive Margaret McDonell saying, “Hitchcock would ‘very much like to do a
story about confidence tricks on a grand scale in which Ingrid could play the
woman who is carefully trained and coached in a gigantic confidence trick which
might involve her marrying some man. He is fascinated with the elaborateness
with which these things are planned and rehearsed and I gather that his idea
would be to have the major part of the picture with the planning and training
and the denouement more or less as the tag.’”
This approach, bold for 1946, continues to fascinate. Magnolia Kane aims to delve into this psychological
characterization, updated to a modern world.
In three
landmark films released over seventy years ago, Alfred Hitchcock’s filmmaking
style created the standard for the suspense thriller genre. His movies, along
with the subsequent generation of influenced films, have inspired the thesis
film Magnolia Kane. The title
character of Magnolia is a spirited, yet delicate protagonist in the tradition
of the thrillers listed above. In addition, the point-of-view, suspenseful
tone, use of objects, and camera movements enhances her psychological
characterization. Ultimately it is the high-stakes, cat-and-mouse deception of
the film’s protagonist that commands the viewer’s attention, drives the story,
and establishes an emotional connection with the audience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leff, Leonard J. Hitchcock and Selznick. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987.
Samuels, Charles Thomas. Encountering Directors. New York:
Capricorn Books, 1972.
Truffaut, Francois. Hitchcock/Truffaut. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1983.
Hitchcock quoted in Truffaut, 116.
