Madman's Weekly

Photo credit:  Moma Hitchcock’s Rebecca , like classic Hitchcock, induces anxiety in the viewer from the very first line of the film: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Beginning the film with a recollection prompts the viewer to wonder not only what Manderley is, but also why the nameless female protagonist can only visit it in her dreams. Already, Manderley establishes a ghostly, indelible presence, haunting both the memories of the speaker in the beginning of the film and the audience’s perception of her, as we witness the speaker being thrown into living in a home overshadowed by the late Rebecca. The film is deeply imbedded in patriarchal values, and the notion that a woman must be complacent to her male counterparts, as seen through the sheepish representation of the “good” Mrs. de Winter. She lacks agency, and her unauthoritative personality proves ideal to Maxim, as he wants a wife he can control. The film’s focus on depicting women with indomitable ...

Photo credit: Downtown Greensboro, Inc.   Psycho begins with a suspenseful, anxiety-inducing music score: the volume and tempo amplifies as the credits roll in. The establishing shot pans over Phoenix, Arizona, and then the camera makes its way through a barely-opened hotel room window, immediately establishing the audience as voyeurs. We see Marion Crane, the female protagonist who is infamously killed off forty-seven minutes into the film, lying in bed shirtless, wearing white underwear, looking up at her divorced love interest, Sam. Already, we know this film is going to be unlike anything Hitchcock’s directed before. The abolishment of The Hays Code, which hindered creativity and “indecency” in film for the first half of the twentieth century, allowed Hitchcock to exploit previously forbidden tactics: a man and woman lying in bed, half-naked, passionately exchanging kisses for more than three seconds at a time, and later in the film, a zoomed-in shot of a toilet flushing. ...