Mike Frank wrote:
> in MARNIE, hitchcock
> has old man strut refer to the attractive woman who has just
> robbed him . . . rutland [sean connery] hears this, and remembers the
> woman [he calls her "the brunette with the legs"] . . . the camera
> then dollys [dollies?] to a close-up of connery's face as he looks
> dreamily
> off-screen and, musing, refers to her as "resourceful" . . . we then cut
> to a close-up of marnie's purse, an icon that has already been established
> as representing both her criminality and her sexuality . . . the cut is
> precisely of the kind that would normally be construed as an eye-line
> match, rutland looking at marnie's pursue . . . problem is that
> marnie is no where near rutland but is in fact checking in to a hotel
> somewhere else entirely . . .
Yes, its a 'thinks' shot, common in Hitchcock's work from the Silent Era
onwards. A possible difference is that Rutland doesn't know where
Marnie is, so the cut to her walking along a hotel corridor, yellow
purse under her arm, is like the answer to his unvoiced question,
'Wonder where she is now.' It isn't a simple statement, 'I can see her
now.' (But actually there is similar cutting in H's BLACKMAIL, 1929.
In each case, the unvoiced question is as much, or more, that of the
audience as it is that of the 'thinking' character.)
Interestingly, the purse symbolism also goes right back to the Silent
Era, to H's first film, THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1925), in fact. (An
ingenue, just up from the country, has her purse stolen outside the
stage door. Think about it!) It continues through H's films of the 30s
(e.g., NUMBER SEVENTEEN), 40s (e.g., SUSPICION), and 50s (e.g., REAR
WINDOW).
Speaking of H's early work, some 'Film-Philosophy' readers may want to
know that a new issue of 'The MacGuffin' (#28) is now out, and contains
a long review (more than half the issue) of Bill Krohn's masterly
"Hitchcock At Work' compared with Steven DeRosa's (rather less masterly)
'Writing With Hitchcock'. There's also further information, based on
unpublished memoirs and notebooks, about the late Charles Bennett,
Hitchcock's screenwriter of the 30s, compiled by his son, John Charles
Bennett. (This complements extracts from CB's memoirs already published
on the 'MacGuffin' website.)
For what it's worth, 'The MacGuffin' is edited by someone whom Dan
Auiler ('VERTIGO: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic', 'Hitchcock's
Notebooks') calls 'a film lover who perhaps knows Hitchcock and his
milieu better than any other film critic'. Subscription information is
on the aforementioned website.
I have a question - to Mike Frank, or anyone else. Please, can someone
tell me whether the ACLA conference in Puerto Rico, scheduled for the
11-14th of last month, went ahead? Did it include any papers and/or
discussion about the concept of the MacGuffin: e.g., as
metaphor/metonmy?
Merci - Ken Mogg.
'MacGuffin' website: http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin
|