hitchcock and the thriller genre

hitchcock and the thriller genre

Think Alfred Hitchcock and sharp images flash to mind.
For Psycho viewers it’s the spectacle of Janet Leigh, wide-eyed before the rip of a knife down her shower curtain. For fans of The Birds it’s the instance when Tippi Hedron is slashed in the bedroom with razor-sharp beaks.
At the time of release most movie watchers agreed each image was gripping – for some, terrifying.
More powerful though is the fact that some 40-odd years since their creation the images remain haunting.
The reason is of course that Hitchcock’s movies are about much more than a collection of horrifying moments. Rather, it’s the complex fabric within which Hitchcock envelopes these scenes that is most responsible for the impact – visceral and lasting – of the scenes themselves.
And, it is this Hitchcock fabric that best defines the classic thriller film genre.
One of the most useful ways to examine this fabric is to view it through the matrix of Hitchcock’s “three realities”, a concept proposed by film analyst Jean Douchet.
In an effort to explain Hitchcock’s remarkable ability to fully engage his audience, Douchet suggests Hitchcock often strives to unveil reality in three ways.
He says the first reality Hitchcock establishes is that of the everyday world, one immediately recognisable by the spectator. The second is the reality of desire where the audience interprets the world according to its own emotional and psychological biases; essentially the audience sees what it wants to see. The third reality is the intellectual world, the space in which the audience seeks to rationalise events.
It’s a matrix neatly summarised, as noted by Douchet, in the opening credit sequence of Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window – the key example, for this essay, of Hitchcock’s work.
The credits show three blinds slowing rising to reveal a grouping of urban apartments.
Behind the first blind we are introduced to a familiar world. As the second blind lifts so too does our desire to see beyond, to know...