HITCHCOCK - LIFE AND FILMS

Are Hitchcock and his personal life reflected in his movies? Is there a deeper reason for his recurrent themes of murder and aberrant psychology in his films?

Some hitchcock film analysts have suggested a strong connection between his personal neurotic urges and the recurrent dominant themes in his films. One such hitchcock film reviewer is Spoto, who in his biography(1983) of Hitchcock made a psychological reduction of his major themes and his own personal urges.

Stanton Peele on his website has written a detailed review of Spoto and has offered an alternate, more realistic and robust analysis of Hitchcock's films and their deeper origins. Some of the factors for the success of his films are hard work, awareness of audience reactions, and discipline, the same ingredients that go to make successful careers elsewhere.

According to Peele, Spoto describes Hitchcock as a man in the grip of uncontrollable impulses. These included misogyny, sadistic tendencies, and fantasies of rape; bathroom and various other fetishes about sex and the body; overwhelming guilt, anxiety, and a mother fixation; and phobias toward women, people in general, and the world at large.

It is difficult to ascertain these in Hithcock's biography. He did proposition Tippi Hedren, and caused her some discomfort in scene. Late he suffered from lonliness and drank often. But any casual look at his films would reveal that his primary motive was to entertain. He himself said that people love to be terrified, and that is what he dealt with.