FEAR
Guilt has many companions.
Among them is most clearly fear. Perhaps even more clearly than innocence,
fear is the contrast of guilt.
A clever device in Hitchcock's
films to augment the fear felt by the protagonists --which is at once heightening
the audience's sense of anxiety over the heroes' well-being-- is his use
of famous movie stars. The audience cannot but readily identify and share
the grief of the stars it reveres. Hitchcock does not just put anybody
in danger but uses famous actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Carry Grant, Jimmy
Stewart, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, Montgomery Clift, and Grace Kelly.
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In some movies Hitchcock
takes a slightly different stance and uses the stronger (sometimes but
not always more famous) actor in the role of the villain. This also serves
to heighten fear and terror, particularly on the part of the audience.
In Notorious,
Claude Rains plays a Nazi obsessed with a woman.
In the original version
of The
Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), it is Peter Lorre who acts as the head
of a gang plotting to kill a statesman.
In this respect, Rebecca
(1940) is an exceptional film, because the hero as well as the villain
--both
women-- are strong characters played by excellent actresses. In the story
of Rebecca, a young woman falls in love with a rich man, Maxim De Winter,
whose previous wife Rebecca died a year earlier. Once married to Maxim,
the woman constantly has to fight the ghost of the former Mrs. De Winter.
The terrorization of
the victim in Rebecca is even more haunting because the subject of terror
is not even visible (except in some of the movie's
posters)
and except of course through Rebecca's faithful housekeeper Mrs.
Danvers).
Click
on the image for a clip on Youtube ( ).
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