Secret Agent, Sabotage, Young and Innocent, and The Lady Vanishes follow the lead of The 39 Steps—as that film had taken the lead of earlier Hitchcock thrillers from The Lodger to The Man Who Knew Too Much—by revolving around murder. Indeed, it can be viewed as a defining feature of the Hitchcock thriller in its various forms—with exceptions that prove the rule, to be sure—that a villainous murderer dwells within the film’s world.
As many other critics have noted, Hitchcock’s villains are often the most interesting characters in their films—the most charming and, sometimes, even the most sympathetic. The Hitchcock villain represents a character type or set of types, like what in The Murderous Gaze I call “the girl-on-the-threshold-of-womanhood” (The Lodger’s Daisy is one) and the officer of the law (Daisy’s frustrated suitor, Joe, for example) who uses his official powers for personal ends. Hitchcock often seems to identify—however exactly we understand this term—at least as much with his villains as with his protagonists. (As I argue in The Murderous Gaze, Hitchcock’s identification with his female characters is at least equally strong.)
Many Hitchcock villains possess elegant manners and the sangfroid of an aesthete or gamesman. Among the examples that come to mind are the artist (Cyril Ritchard) in Blackmail, Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious, Tony (Ray Milland) in Dial “M” for Murder, and, of course, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) in Vertigo. Just think of the moment in The 39 Steps when Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle), with a grin that invites an appreciative grin in return, holds up his hand, which is missing the top joint of its little finger, to disclose that he is the diabolical mastermind Annabella Smith warned Hannay about.
Figure 2.1
Villains are not the only Hitchcock characters who cultivate the style of a gamesman/aesthete, however. When at the end of Frenzy Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) catches the serial killer with his pants down, he speaks the wonderful line, “Mr. Rusk, you’re not wearing your tie,” with exactly the same understated relish that we hear in James Mason’s voice, at the end of North by Northwest, when Phillip Vandamm, now in custody, says to the Professor (Leo G. Carroll), who has just had a marksman shoot Vandamm’s lieutenant, Leonard (Martin Landau), “Not very sporting, using real bullets.”
With his cockney upbringing, Hitchcock no doubt found satisfaction in embracing the honorable, time-honored British tradition of associating villainy with the upper class. (But compare Frenzy, with its unapologetically working-class villain.) The effeteness projected by this style also gives some Hitchcock villains a hint of homosexuality. This enhances our sense, in a number of Hitchcock films, most notably Strangers on a Train (1951), that the bond between male protagonist and villain is more passionate than the relationship either has, or desires, with whatever woman whose affections are ostensibly at issue.
There are other Hitchcock films, though, in which the villain loves a woman, or at least passionately desires her. We see this in Notorious, for example; hence Hitchcock’s remark to Truffaut that Sebastian loves Alicia more deeply than Devlin does. We see it in North by Northwest, as well. Vandamm acts like a man who treats matters of life and death as games to be judged in aesthetic, not moral, terms—as if how well one plays the game, not whether one wins or loses (that is, lives or dies), is all that really counts. Yet when Leonard informs him that Eve has betrayed him, Vandamm loses his composure and punches him in the jaw. And in Murder! Handel Fane’s (Esme Percy) sangfroid momentarily suffers a meltdown when Sir John (Herbert Marshall) has him audition for the murderer’s role in his new play. Despite his disciplined efforts to keep his feelings hidden, Fane is tormented by seething emotions arising from his unrequited love for Diana, emotions he struggles to control and mask.
Having in mind the evocative question the state trooper asks the used-car dealer in Psycho (“Did she look like a wrong one to you?”), in The Murderous Gaze I call Hitchcock’s tormented villains “Wrong Ones.” Other examples that come to mind are the Avenger in The Lodger; the “bloke what twitches” (George Curzon), the real murderer whom the wrongly accused Robert Tisdall (Derrick de Marney) tries to track down in Young and Innocent; Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) in Shadow of a Doubt; Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll) in Spellbound; Phillip (Farley Granger) in Rope; Jonathan (John Dall) in Stage Fright (1950); Bruno (Robert Walker) in Strangers on a Train; and, most famously (but also most ambiguously), Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Psycho.
In The 39 Steps we never see a crack in the villain’s gamesman/aesthete facade wide enough to reveal what inner turmoil, if any, lies beneath. The only time he drops his mask at all, and then only for an instant, occurs when there is a knock on the door at just the moment he is waiting to see how Hannay will react to his theatrical master-stroke of unmasking himself by showing his hand. As Professor Jordan goes to unlock the door, he stops grinning and casts Hannay a look of frustration, as if he expects his intended victim to share his impatience with this untimely interruption. It’s the professor’s wife (Helen Haye), who tersely reminds him that lunch is ready. Her air of disapproval hints at the possibility that her husband resents not only her intrusion but her, and expects Hannay to share his attitude. The look the professor casts Hannay invites him to acknowledge that the two men are members of an exclusive club, as it were—a club that excludes this woman, perhaps all women. By presenting this look, is Hitchcock inviting us to consider the possibility that the professor’s work as a spy is his chief area of self-assertion in a sexless marriage, as if masterminding his traitorous scheme to wield power over the world by stabbing England in the back is a displacement of a wish to murder his wife, perhaps a wish to do violence to all women? Such an interpretation, which would make Professor Jordan a descendant of the Avenger, remains speculative at best, however, precisely because we never see the professor’s sangfroid decisively melt down. Rather, Hitchcock chooses to leave it open whether Jordan is really a “Wrong One” tormented by all-too-human emotions he struggles to control, or mask, or an unfeeling, inhuman monster, utterly indifferent to the humanity of others, like Eric (Ivan Triesault), the most vicious of the Nazi conspirators in Notorious, and Willi (Walter Slezak), the shipwrecked Nazi in Lifeboat (1944).
By calling Hitchcock villains of this type “unfeeling,” I don’t mean that they feel nothing. Willi clearly feels pleasure, for example, in repeatedly demonstrating how superior he is in intelligence and physical prowess to the Americans in the lifeboat with him. That he also feels fear is evidenced by the beads of sweat that ultimately expose his villainous nature. And, as Robin Wood points out in his brilliant and detailed reading of Lifeboat, Willi feels such a strong desire to live that he struggles desperately to climb back into the boat after the American and British survivors throw him overboard. They have to keep beating him brutally until they know for certain that he is dead. What Willi seems to lack altogether is regard for the humanity of others. In The Philadelphia Story Dexter tells Tracy that she will “never be a first-class human being” until she learns to “have some regard for human frailty.” It’s an understatement to say that Willi, judged by this standard, falls short of being a first-class human being. Willis contempt for human frailty is absolute. Is he a human being at all, or is he an inhuman monster?
In nineteenth-century theatrical melodramas, Peter Brooks argues in his seminal work, The Melodramatic Imagination, the villain embodies pure Evil, understood as an occult, supernatural force at eternal war with the powers of Good (likewise an occult, supernatural force).1 In effect, such a villain is not human; he is an agent of the Devil or, indeed, the Devil himself. And the woman whose pure Goodness gives her the power to defeat the villain—of course, it doesn’t hurt that God has her back—is more angel than flesh-and-blood human being. In melodramas of this kind a battle in the eternal war between Good and Evil is won when Goodness is publicly recognized in a “movement of astonishment,” and Evil—with its own lesser power to astonish—is driven out. These plays are dramas of recognition, Brooks argues, in which acts of what he calls “self-nomination” are pivotal. “The villain at some point always bursts forth in a statement”—typically delivered as an aside directly to the audience—“of his evil nature and intentions,” and at some point, too, the heroine announces her moral purity.2
Figure 2.2
There is a celebrated moment in Blackmail when the artist, having lured Alice (Anny Ondra) to his atelier, is waiting for her to finish dressing, and Hitchcock contrives for a shadow to be cast on his face that momentarily makes him appear to sport the curlicue mustache, eminently twirlable, of precisely the kind of villain who stalked the nineteenth-century stage and astonished the audience when he unmasked himself.
This man is unmasked here as a villain whose intentions toward Alice, judged by the standards of conventional morality, are anything but honorable. But this is not a moment of “self-nomination” in Brooks’s sense. The declaration is performed by Hitchcock, not by the character. And Hitchcock is being ironic. Rather than declaring this man to possess the astonishing power that accrues to the villain of a nineteenth-century theatrical melodrama by virtue of his embodiment of pure Evil, Hitchcock’s gesture underscores that the character is not the Devil; he has no supernatural powers, only human appetites and a human capacity for inhumanity. For that matter Alice is no angel, as the artist is about to learn the hard way. She possesses an all-too-human capacity to kill.
In Emerson’s view human beings are always in the process of becoming. This means that our moral identities are never fixed, never pure. It follows that we do not have the power to declare our moral identity the way villains of nineteenth-century theatrical melodramas do. Characters in movies are always also the actors whom the camera filmed in the act of playing those characters. And these actors are mortal human beings like us, not embodiments of pure Evil or pure Goodness. How, then, is it possible—is it possible?—for human subjects of the camera to incarnate characters who possess the power to declare their moral identity?
When Professor Jordan holds up his hand, he presents to Hannay a view that astonishes his intended victim, as it is meant to do. By this gesture, the professor declares his identity. But does he declare his moral identity, in Brooks’s sense? Hannay understands the gesture to mean that this man intends to kill him. But the professor goes on to explain to Hannay that killing him is something he has no choice but to do, not something he wishes to do. We may well suspect—no doubt Hannay does—that his adversary is putting on an act here, that he relishes killing, as villains are wont to do. But if the professor’s good manners are a cover for his brutal nature, he is not unmasking himself, not openly declaring his Evil moral nature in the spirit of the villains of nineteenth-century theatrical melodramas. And there is a further crucial distinction to be drawn. When those villains perform acts of “self-nomination,” they make their announcements to the theater audience. Professor Jordan, by contrast, addresses his announcement only to Hannay, who is his audience. Film is not theater. We are not the professor’s audience. And in a theatrical melodrama, of course, there is no camera.
When Jordan holds up his hand, the view he presents to Hannay is the view Hitchcock presents to us. “When describing what happens in a film,” I wrote in The Murderous Gaze, “we frequently find ourselves identifying with the camera, saying, for example, ‘Now we see…’ But it is impossible for us to identify with the agency that presents us with this view. The view of framed by Hitchcock’s camera imposes itself on us here, disrupting and compelling our attention. Hitchcock, too, is showing his hand.”3
Our view of the professor’s hand, framed to represent Hannay’s point of view, links Hitchcock with this villainous murderer (both are authors of views; both are authors of this view). And it links us with the murderer’s intended victim. (Hannay views this hand, just as we do.) When Hannay arrives at the home of the man he believes will save him, he unwittingly walks into a trap. Hitchcock has set a trap for us as well. And at the moment the professor reveals to Hannay that he intends to kill him, not rescue him, Hitchcock unmasks himself to us. By the simple gesture of showing his hand, Professor Jordan means to open Hannay’s eyes to the reality of his situation, the fact that trusting him was a fatal mistake. And by the simple gesture of presenting us the view that Jordan presents to Hannay, Hitchcock opens our eyes to the reality of our situation, as viewers: that it is a mistake for us to take for granted that we can trust this film’s author. We trust Hitchcock at our peril.
When the professor goes on to shoot him, Hannay’s startled eyes close, he slumps to the floor, and our view fades to black. Jordan has every reason to believe that he has killed Hannay. But Hitchcock is playing him for a sucker. The professor’s fate is in the hands of the film’s author as surely as Hannay’s is. They are both subjects of Hitchcock’s camera. The professor believes he has the power to write Hannay’s future (or lack thereof), but he, too, dwells within a world whose real author is Hitchcock.
In passages such as this, Hitchcock asserts an affinity between a villain’s murderous gesture and a gesture he performs with the camera. In other passages Hitchcock makes the camera assume a villain’s point of view or frames the villain staring into the depths of the frame in a way that makes of him a veritable stand-in for the camera. In such cases Hitchcock associates the camera’s passive aspect, not its agency, with villainy. Hence those passages are akin to the Hitchcock passages that portray guilty acts of viewing. When Norman Bates views Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) through his secret peephole, for example, this is not an instance of a villain’s self-nomination. Unbeknownst to Norman, he is being “nominated” by Hitchcock, who performs a gesture with the camera that links Norman’s villainous act of viewing with our own.
In The Lodger there is an astonishing sequence that begins with a shot of the lodger, with a trace of what appears to be the knowing smile of a villain, looking directly into the camera. The fact that the sequence begins with this shot, which provides us with no way of knowing where he is located within the projected world or who or what he is looking at, enhances our unsettling impression that unlike Norman, who seems oblivious of our looking at him looking at Marion through his peephole, the lodger seems to be aware that we are looking at him; indeed, he seems to be returning our gaze, the way in the most chilling moment of Rear Window (1954) the murderer Thorwald (Raymond Burr), suddenly becoming aware that Jeff (James Stewart) is looking at him from his apartment across the courtyard, meets Jeff’s gaze. If the lodger is capable of returning our gaze, must he not possess more than merely human powers, powers worthy of the villains of nineteenth-century theatrical melodramas, powers the all-too-trusting Daisy does not suspect he possesses?
Figure 2.3
The next shot, however, from the lodger’s point of view, retroactively places him in the audience for Daisy’s fashion show. For a moment we are reassured by the explanation this shot provides. Evidently, this character does not possess the power to overleap the barrier separating our world from his world. He is an ordinary spectator who takes pleasure in looking at Daisy, just as we do. Then it may well strike us that this ordinary viewer might not be so innocent after all. Perhaps no viewer is. The passage does not declare the lodger to be an embodiment of pure Evil, but neither does it declare him to be innocent. Rather, it opens our eyes to the fact that we do not really know him. For all we know, these shots are saying, this subject of the camera—any subject of the camera—could be a murderer. In the face of the camera the lodger is only a human being, as we are, not the embodiment of an occult, supernatural force. But to be human is to be capable of murder.
