Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Hitchcock, Motifs and Melodrama
- Part II The Key Motifs
- Appendix I TV Episodes
- Appendix II Articles on Hitchcock’s Motifs
- Appendix III Definitions
- References
- Filmography
- List of Illustrations
- Index of Hitchcock’s Films and their Motifs
- General Index
- Film Culture in Transition General Editor: Thomas Elsaesser
A Melodramatic Motif: Hands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Hitchcock, Motifs and Melodrama
- Part II The Key Motifs
- Appendix I TV Episodes
- Appendix II Articles on Hitchcock’s Motifs
- Appendix III Definitions
- References
- Filmography
- List of Illustrations
- Index of Hitchcock’s Films and their Motifs
- General Index
- Film Culture in Transition General Editor: Thomas Elsaesser
Summary
With some Hitchcock motifs, melodrama is infused directly into the expression of the motif in the sense that it is presented in a heightened, stylised form. This is perhaps a corollary of Hitchcock's visual style: the assembling of pre-visualised shots according to a precise editing plan. As a result of this style, certain elements are focused upon in a manner which is ‘expressive’, charged with affect. In an article published in 1937, Hitchcock himself discusses this aspect of his style. I would like to quote two extracts.
What I like to do always is to photograph just the little bits of a scene that I really need for building up a visual sequence. I want to put my film together on the screen, not simply to photograph something that has been put together already in the form of a long piece of stage acting. This is what gives an effect of life to a picture – the feeling that when you see it on the screen you are watching something that has been conceived and brought to birth directly in visual terms.
(Hitchcock 1937/1995: 255)The example he then uses to illustrate this method is the meal scene which ends with Mrs Verloc stabbing her husband in SABOTAGE, which I discuss under Food and murder. After describing the sequence, Hitchcock comments:
So you build up the psychological situation, piece by piece, using the camera to emphasise first one detail, then another. The point is to draw the audience right inside the situation instead of leaving them to watch it from outside, from a distance. And you can do this only by breaking the action up into details and cutting from one to the other, so that each detail is forced in turn on the attention of the audience and reveals its psychological meaning.
(Hitchcock 1937/1995: 256-57)As well as commenting on his editing style in general, Hitchcock's remarks indicate that it is the way in which he incorporates certain details into a scene which gives them such a charge.
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- Information
- Hitchcock's Motifs , pp. 43 - 46Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2005