Children's cameos

At first glance, children may not seem to be a major feature of Hitchcock's work. They have substantial roles in relatively few of his films, and even in these they are seen primarily in relation to the adults: Hitchcock does not enter into the child's world in the manner of, say, Robert Mulligan. The TV episode ‘Bang! You’re Dead’ is the furthest he has gone in that direction (➢ APPENDIX I). On the other hand, children do in fact make some sort of an appearance in a surprisingly large number of his films and, even though their parts may be small, they are usually vivid. At the most basic level are little scenes in which children turn up as mischief makers, usually at the expense of the adults. Examples include the upper-middle class boys who fight each other and later disrupt the school dinner in DOWNHILL and their lower-class equivalents who, later in the first act, prompt Roddy into behaving foolishly in the Bunne Shoppe; the landlady's children who surround Sir John's bed and create chaos in MURDER!; the cousins who make off with Johnny's bowler hat during the family farewell in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and the street urchins who, when Mr and Mrs Smith decide to dine alfresco at Momma Lucy’s, appear looking hungry at their table and drive them indoors.

In all these scenes, the children disrupt the adults’ world with their insistent presence. The disruption is particularly in evidence when there is a class difference between adults and children. In DOWNHILL, Roddy gives the boy in the shop an expensive box of sweets for a half-penny, but then rings up £1 on the till, which obliges him to pay Mabel, the shopgirl, £1 in compensation. Mabel later exploits this payment in her story that he is the young man who got her pregnant. IN MR AND MRS SMITH, David and Ann try and outstare the children, but are themselves outstared; here the children are like guilt images, drawing attention to the couple's wealth and their own deprivation.