Alfred Hitchcock Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Vincent Canby

Critical Essay by Vincent Canby

Though Hitchcock's work remained out of the reach of fads, except to the extent to which he cast currently popular actors in his films, he absorbed as natural and fitting all of the technical changes of the decades through which he proceeded with his natural caution, like someone crossing a mine field, not because he was afraid of being blown up but because of his aversion to disorder of any sort….

Though Hitchcock pretended to consider himself a prude as movies became increasingly gamey, I suspect that the sex in his films will never look prudish. Hitchcock was a romantic. He loved sexual euphemism—the sudden burst of fireworks in "To Catch a Thief," the train barrelling into a tunnel in "North by Northwest." In the service of lesser filmmakers, such euphemisms look prudish. Not in Hitchcock's movies….

All of his films are sexually aware. That's very different from being sexually...
(read more)