Submitted by KevinClifton on Mon, 12/12/2011 - 7:04pm
Presentation Title:
Filmic Suspense and Nonlinear Music in Hitchcock's Rope and Vertigo
My presentation explores the dramatic employment of music in two classic Hitchcock films: _Rope_ (1948) and _Vertigo_ (1958), both of which effectively sustain suspense throughout the filmic narrative. In _Rope_, Phillip Morgan, one of the killers, gives an on-screen performance of the first movement of Francis Poulenc’s Mouvements Perpétuels (1918) during a macabre dinner party, where one of the guests lies dead in a trunk. Phillip’s former prep-school teacher—Rupert Cadell—notices Phillip’s odd behavior of playing the Poulenc piece over and over a
Disability and Voyeurism in Rear Window and Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock’s films Rear Window and Vertigo shared many things in addition to the use of Jimmy Stewart as the male lead. In both films, Stewart spends time with a woman whose characterization is a complication of both the maternal and the romantic. Both films contain themes of voyeurism and isolation within society and introduce the concept of voyeurism in the opening credit sequence. Particularly striking is that Jimmy Stewart's character begins each film in a state of disability.
Submitted by jarrodswint on Wed, 11/30/2011 - 11:57pm
Presentation Title:
The Truth in the Shadow: a Study of Relationships in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt
In my paper I investigate Hitchcock’s presentation of social expectations and gender roles through the pairing of characters in his film Shadow of a Doubt. I argue that through the use of binary comparisons amongst his characters, including the use of the doppelganger motif, Hitchcock explores modern ideas about moral identity, social conventions, and gender roles.
Submitted by bkubasta on Thu, 11/17/2011 - 10:34pm
Presentation Title:
Sublimation North by Northwest
Abstract: Alfred Hitchcock consistently made cinema audiences uncomfortable by presenting characters struggling to control dark desires and haunting obsessions—often providing morbid confirmation rather than liberating catharsis of the audience’s own psychological shadows.
I Look Up, I Look Down: Mythopoeic Reference in Vertigo
The recounting of Greek classics enjoyed a popular revival among artists and writers the first part of the 20th century. James Joyce, Eugene O’Neill, Hart Crane and Henry Miller all used Greek myth as the basis of their writing. One of the most interesting treatments of classical Greek legend comes in a retelling of Jason and his search for the Golden Fleece as Hitchcock’s mentor, H. G.
