My Life With Hitchcock
It's pretty strange when you see all your sins thrown onto celluloid for all the world to see. Or if not sins necessarily, then the darker aspects of your personality.
But in a perverse way, that's what attracts me to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. The fact that I can identify with so many of his characters (for different reasons) makes his films all the more compelling for me. I can see a lot of myself in his work, and thus quite a bit in the man himself.
Take Rear Window, for example. The premise is in itself pretty simple: a magazine photographer named Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) who has broken his leg has nothing to do but sit in his wheelchair at the rear window of his apartment and watch the neighbours in the rest of the complex. He begins to notice something strange; a middle-aged couple across the way has been arguing, and the next day the wife is nowhere to be found. Her disappearance along with the husband's odd behaviour convinces Jeff that she has been murdered by her husband. At the same time Jeff has his own relationship problems, in the form of his high-class society girlfriend Lisa (the gorgeous Grace Kelly) who desperately wants Jeff to settle down and get married--to her, of course. It makes for a fairly suspenseful story, but digging beneath the surface reveals an even deeper meaning.
Jeff is a photographer; he makes his living out of watching people and things through a lens. Throughout the film, he watches the suspected murderer through his camera. And, of course, much of the basic premise is based around watching other people without their knowledge. The whole thing is very much a comment on how "we've become a race of Peeping Toms" (to quote one character) and gives us a lead character who is basically a voyuer. Or, to put it more broadly, someone who prefers fantasy over reality. Psychologically, he'd rather get involved with a woman across the way (in solving the wife's murder) than with the wonderful woman who is right there in his own apartment, forever trying to get his attention.
That doesn't totally fit me, of course. I would much rather interact with a woman (in this particular case) than watch her from a "safe" distance. But the fact is, I still do it. I just don't have the confidence in myself to develop my friendships with girls into something deeper and more rewarding. I always find it safer to keep them at arm's length and develop a kind of idealized fantasy instead, where we fall in love, we date, we get engaged, we get married, and we have a wonderful life together--but all of it happens entirely in my head.
Trying to shake myself out of that is quite a challenge; seeing it all played out on a movie screen is a definite motivation. It's sort of like God is saying, "See? See what happens when you do that? Now stop it. That's not the way it's supposed to happen; that's not the way I intended it." Well, all I can do is pray for strength, and for the personal confidence to open myself up to people so that I can have a deeper relationship with them. It's a lot more fun than 'spying' on them.
Be seeing you,
Steven
But in a perverse way, that's what attracts me to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. The fact that I can identify with so many of his characters (for different reasons) makes his films all the more compelling for me. I can see a lot of myself in his work, and thus quite a bit in the man himself.
Take Rear Window, for example. The premise is in itself pretty simple: a magazine photographer named Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) who has broken his leg has nothing to do but sit in his wheelchair at the rear window of his apartment and watch the neighbours in the rest of the complex. He begins to notice something strange; a middle-aged couple across the way has been arguing, and the next day the wife is nowhere to be found. Her disappearance along with the husband's odd behaviour convinces Jeff that she has been murdered by her husband. At the same time Jeff has his own relationship problems, in the form of his high-class society girlfriend Lisa (the gorgeous Grace Kelly) who desperately wants Jeff to settle down and get married--to her, of course. It makes for a fairly suspenseful story, but digging beneath the surface reveals an even deeper meaning.
Jeff is a photographer; he makes his living out of watching people and things through a lens. Throughout the film, he watches the suspected murderer through his camera. And, of course, much of the basic premise is based around watching other people without their knowledge. The whole thing is very much a comment on how "we've become a race of Peeping Toms" (to quote one character) and gives us a lead character who is basically a voyuer. Or, to put it more broadly, someone who prefers fantasy over reality. Psychologically, he'd rather get involved with a woman across the way (in solving the wife's murder) than with the wonderful woman who is right there in his own apartment, forever trying to get his attention.
That doesn't totally fit me, of course. I would much rather interact with a woman (in this particular case) than watch her from a "safe" distance. But the fact is, I still do it. I just don't have the confidence in myself to develop my friendships with girls into something deeper and more rewarding. I always find it safer to keep them at arm's length and develop a kind of idealized fantasy instead, where we fall in love, we date, we get engaged, we get married, and we have a wonderful life together--but all of it happens entirely in my head.
Trying to shake myself out of that is quite a challenge; seeing it all played out on a movie screen is a definite motivation. It's sort of like God is saying, "See? See what happens when you do that? Now stop it. That's not the way it's supposed to happen; that's not the way I intended it." Well, all I can do is pray for strength, and for the personal confidence to open myself up to people so that I can have a deeper relationship with them. It's a lot more fun than 'spying' on them.
Be seeing you,
Steven
posted by Steven | 2:56 PM
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