When we speak of [Hitchcock's] camera, of course, we are speaking of an amalgam of director and audience: the director's eye and the eye of the beholder welded into a single screen image. The nosy, rubbernecking camera of the opening montage of Frenzy is an admission from Hitchcock that he is a thrill-seeker at heart (his is the most prominent of the gaping faces on the screen) and a reminder to his movie audience that they are no better: a serio-comic blending of 'I confess' and 'J'accuse'. It is fair warning of what is to follow: not only further titillations of the peek-a-boo variety but constant reminders of the voyeuristic impulses which are all too willingly being aroused within us by the Master of Prurient Suspense, the patron saint of Peeping Toms and moviegoers. (p. 134)
Much of the vitality of Frenzy results from this implied relationship between director and audience. Hitchcock plays with our anticipations, showing us sometimes too little, sometimes too much of what we expect to see, but in every case drawing our somewhat ruffled attention to the expectations themselves….
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