Marian Keane commentary

Thanks for the encouragement!
I plan to watch “Marnie” tonight. I didn’t want to jump that far ahead in his body of work quite yet, but I saw it on the shelf at the library so I figured, what the hell, I don’t own that one so I might as well take it home.
Any sex-related themes in this one?
Just kidding.

Sean: I’m not giving anything away when I say that MARNIE is all about sex and extremely Freudian, especially at the end.

There’s also a lot of animal imagery, which is symbolic of human sexuality.

@dr. frank

“In Rear Window, Jeff’s broken leg (or “swollen foot,” the English translation of the name “Oedipus”) confines him to a wheelchair, but it also causes him to interrogate his long-time “engagement” to fashion model Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly)."

“In Rear Window, for instance, Jeffries is unable to pop the cork on a bottle of wine (erectile dysfunction?), and his repeated attempts to scratch under his leg cast with a back scratcher can be likened to masturbation. Jeff’s long 400mm. telephoto lens is another instance of a phallic substitute, especially when it is seen resting in his lap.”

in these particular instances, i think youre reaching very far without much to back it up (granted, i havent read your entire article).

what does a broken leg have to do with a swollen foot? it didnt look swollen to me. why bring oedipus into it?

how are you equating erectile dysfunction to not being able to pop a cork? i have even more problems with equating his back scratcher to masturbation. why?

the telephoto lens as phallic substitute seems weak to me as well. all of this seems abstract analysis for the sake of analysis. it doesnt probe deeper at all into the film text.

I have to say I rather liked “Marnie”. It looks great. I guess I didn’t mind so much because it’s so upfront with the sexuality and Freudian psychology—it’s all about that. It wears it on it’s sleeve. I didn’t feel like I had to dig so much or look for clues (although I’m sure they’re some there that I probably didn’t catch). It was still suspenseful, but on a more psychological level. I don’t get why Mark forces Marnie to marry him, though. Is he as messed up as she is? He f***ing rapes her?! Bad Bond. In a way, Marnie vaguely reminded me of January Jones’ character on the series “Mad Men” on AMC. Anyone watch that? Good show. Maybe it’s just the look and the obsession with horses. Speaking of which, I’ll have to work out Marnie’s having to shoot Forio—that seemed to have some loaded meaning (no pun intended).

So, (I know I’m jumping around a lot in his body of work here, but….) since “Marnie” is one of his later films and the censors were, I’m assuming, probably more lenient for “Marnie” than in his earlier works (though still somewhat strict), does that mean this is the kind of overt exploration of sexuality he would have preferred to make early on? Maybe that’s too broad an assumption. Just wondering if maybe I was unfair on Keane. I prefer to think that it’s just that “Marnie” is the way it is because its more explicitly about sexuality and psychology, whereas his other films may have some sexual references or symbolism (though I still think Keane kind of overdoes it in “Notorious”), but it’s not necessarily what they’re about. I guess they just vary. I have some reading to do :-).

Like I’ve said before, I think the earlier films I’ve seen so far are pretty good yarns without over analyzing them too much. I’d hate to go back to “39 Steps,” for example, trying to shoehorn too much symbolism into it. I agree you can possibly make the film more enriching and have a little more depth, but there’s a limit as well where it kind of spoils it.

I still have to see “Rear Window” next, but I think I’m going to kind of take the middle road between Dr. Tomasulo and the other comments. I’ll keep my eyes (and ears) open, but I want to enjoy it more at the main story (Master of Suspense) level more than any subtext that may be there. I hope that doesn’t make me sound too intellectually lazy. I mean, I know that the sexual symbolism and subtext and all that may make it better (more suspenseful?) to some extent, but I don’t want to miss the forest for the tress. If that makes any sense. Maybe the subtext is the forest—crap, I just confused myself.

Oh well, enough of that, I’ll just close by saying Diane Baker was a hottie!

@Bobby Wise: I’m sorry that my arguments about REAR WINDOW didn’t convince you. Although my full article goes into more detail, what i provided above is certainly representative of my thinking about how Hitch used “symbolism” and dream imagery to represent human sexuality and gender, especially while under the eyes of the censors.

I could go through each of the examples I provided and re-litigate them but my guess is that you won’t be convinced if you have a predisposition to not accept this sort of sexual representation in Hitchcock’s work.

I will comment on a few things, though:

1. My analysis, while apparently not as over-the-top as Marian Keane’s, is rooted in the GENERAL idea that Hitch used phallic and cunnic imagery, as well as Freudian concepts, throughout his work. He acknowledged as much about psychoanalysis in several interviews (although he was also contradictory about whether he believed in such theories or not). Some of his films even explicitly mention Freud by name: SPELLBOUND and MARNIE, for instance.

Another GENERAL point is that Hitch used these images and ideas to address one of his major obsessions: how men and women relate (or fail to relate) to each other. During most of his career he was under the thumb of British and American censors and so had to be clever about how he showed sex, especially homosexuality (i.e., REBECCA, ROPE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN)

2. The “swollen foot” (Oedipus) connection to Jeff’s broken leg is not supposed to be taken literally. Symbols and allusions rarely are. Sure, Hitch could have set up Jeff with a broken FOOT or even a club foot but then it would have been an overt, “on-the-nose” reference to Oedipus (at least to those who know about the origin of the word in Greek). Chaplin walks around the GOLD RUSH with wrappings around one foot (he had to eat his boot to survive). I also take that to be an Oedipal reference. Besides, in REAR WINDOW, Stella the nurse happens to mention a punishment of a red hot poker in the eyes, and Oedipus tears out his eyes at the end of the play.

3. What is the point of having Jeff try to open a bottle of wine, anchored in his lap, only to fail IF NOT to suggest his failing as a man in his relationship with Lisa? The fact that the bottle is longer than it is wide is proof positive that it is a phallic symbol! :-) Hence, his failure to get the foam to spurt out of it represents his inability to satisfy his “fiancee.”

4. The business about “his repeated attempts to scratch under his leg cast with a back scratcher” being likened to masturbation is a pretty standard interpretation in academic film studies.

5. Jeff could have had an “ordinary” telephoto lens but he uses a 400mm.one. When resting in his lap, it seems almost TOO obvious to me.

Finally, the sheer NUMBER of such props must suggest something, although I’m sure they can be explained away: He’s a photographer, so naturally he has a long lens. He’s got a long leg cast and naturally it gets itchy under there. His fiancee orders dinner from “21” so naturally it comes with a bottle of wine, etc. The fact is that almost none of these items are really needed for narrative purposes alone (his binoculars could have been used and I would not have claimed that binoculars are phallic).

P.S. A recent book suggests that “Among the more astonishing revelations is that the filmmaker, who wed lifelong collaborator Alma Reveille in 1926, experienced sex but once in his life — and that occasion produced their only child, Patricia.” Furthermore, Ken Mogg, a noted Hitch scholar, has said that, "Arthur Laurents, who scripted Rope (1948), has said that the ‘celibate’ Hitchcock regarded sex with disdain, that he wouldn’t be part of it – though in another way he would indulge in it by telling associates dirty jokes and by teasing audiences with artfully suggestive love-scenes.

So, a sexually repressed director with a major Oedipus complex would likely use sexual symbolism in his films rather than address it directly in his own life. BTW, I am not a psychiatrist but I play one on this Web site.

Personally, I have no problem with reading the imagery in the way Frank suggests, although some of the Oepidal signifiers may not fit my thinking on the matter, but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to do that since the film is imminently clear on the basic facts regarding Jeff’s “impotence”. One doesn’t need to read into the images to understand his reluctance to commit to Lisa or his inability to act when she requires his assistance. That his camera is the object with which he spies on his neighbors and with which he, effectively, defeats Thornwald by blinding him, need not be seen strictly within the bounds of Freudian psychology to be understood in virtually the same manner. Using a psychological model certainly can make the relevance of those images more readily coherent or clear on a filmwide level, but they can also limit a different intuitive understanding of the film if applied too vigorously. Hitchcock may, and almost certainly was, influenced by some popular psychological thinking of his time, but the films haven’t dated as much as those ideas because the power of his conception and personal emphases keep the films fresh and more abundant for interpretation than would be the case if it were a strict substitution symbolism. Which is why I’m glad to see Sean work out the films in his own manner without totally disregarding the opinions of others who’ve invested a lot of thought into the films.

i think we’re being too broad with the term “impotence”. if jeff doesnt wasnt to marry lisa, thats not impotence. impotence is not being physically able to have sex. on the other points, yes, its more closely related to what impotence is.

i dont care for the way you explained away the swollen foot. it seems you really want to force that to stick. a broken leg is not a swollen foot, nor does it allude to one.

why is chaplin in “gold rush” walking around with a wrapped foot also an oedipal reference? does that mean any character in the history of cinema with a general leg injury, much less a specific foot injury, is referencing oedipus? whats the connection?

regarding stella, a red hot poker in the eyes is not the same as oedipus tearing out his own eyes. i see what you want to get at, but for me its as oblique as a broken leg equating to a swollen foot.

i didnt know the back scratcher as masturbation was a standard interpretation in academic film studies. whats the connection? even more importantly, if thats the standard-issue interpretation, why use it? it seems its been beaten to death (pun intended).

@Greg X: Well put!

@Bobby Wise: I think we’ll just have to ‘agree to disagree" on these points. Further elaboration on my part will not really advance the discussion because I cannot meet your terms. You seem to require that every allusion or symbol have a one-to-one correspondence with some specific signifier and that’s just not how they work in art.

So, as I explained several times already, NO a broken leg is not a swollen foot and a cork that can’t be popped is not a limp penis and a red hot poker to the eye is not yanking out of one’s eyes. There’s no need for an exact correspondence (in fact, if there was, the cinema would be filled with ACTUAL phalluses and vaginas!) There are relevant similarities, however, especially given Hitch’s well-known interest in things psychological and images derived from dreams. In dreams, for example, we usually employ what Freud called SUBSTITUTION in the dream-work to shield the conscious mind from the true latent content and meaning of the reverie. A person may not dream directly about his/her mother, for instance, but instead a mother FIGURE (an old teacher, an aunt, a friend) appears to play that role. So, no, I don’t want to correlate

So it is with artists, especially those who explore the psyche (and, like Greg, I attribute that intention to Alfred Hitchcock). They SUBSTITUTE a prop for a concept in order to visually convey something about life or their characters — what T. S. Eliot called the “objective correlative.” D. H. Lawrence, for example, called Moby-Dick “the phallic subconscious of man.” (I don’t buy that for an instant. I prefer Herman Melville’s explanation: “MOBY-DICK is just a fish story.”)

Think of the image below — the famous last shot of Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA. At first glance, this does not have anything to do with sexuality or gender, but since the whole film is about gender relationships, maybe the interpretation below IS appropriate, especially since it was endorsed by Antonioni himself.

Here, Mt. Etna in the left background is equated (or associated with) the woman because of its breast-like shape (it’s also a potentially active volcano). The man is affiliated with the decaying wall on screen right, immovable and moribund.

I feel uncomfortable defending Freudian analysis of films to this extent because I am far from an extremist in this regard. (Marian Keane and Peter Lehman are the chief purveyors of over-the-top Freudian interpretations, as are Kaja Silverman, Todd MacGowan, Laura Mulvey, Slavoj Žižek, and others the chief purveyors of Lacanian psychoanalysis in film studies.) Maybe this all HAS been “beaten to death” as you say, in which case maybe we should stop the (master)beating (pun intended).

yes, we can agree to disagree. but no, im not expecting a clean one-to-one correlation when looking at symbols.

when it comes to a swollen foot, id be satisfied with the reading if hitch chose a broken foot instead of a broken leg, or any other type of foot injury.

for the red hot poker to the eyes, id rather stella mention something like “you ever hear of oedipus, jeffries?” and jeffires could say “huh?” she could then shake her head and walk away. not that im presuming to re-write the master!

but you know, i just thought of something. maybe the climactic sequence alludes to the red hot poker youre speaking of. when jeffries burns out the vision of thorwald’s eyes and we see a subjective rendering of it.

@Dr. Tomasulo and Bobby:
I’m staying out of that one. Interesting debate, but I don’t think either of you is convincing the other. I’ll just say, in my opinion, the thing I like about Hitchcock is, whether he (or the writers) intends the references or not, to what extent, what is or isn’t mitigated by the censors is all subjective. The hoi poloi like myself can simply enjoy the straightforward suspense and entertainment; and the sexual subtexts may be there to the extent you want to look for them (if it’s intentional, and I miss it, I can still enjoy the film on another level and be content with that), if some academics (this is not directed at you Doc, but the others you mentioned who take it to the extreme) want to see genitals everywhere and that pleases them, they can knock themselves out. I think it should’ve been more balanced on the criterion commentary, though. Academics should allow for other interpretations and I think most probably do. I think Frank is being fair in that regard and has stated his opinion (rather convincingly, I thought) and the general view of some academics without claiming that it is the definitive, or only, viewpoint. I didn’t get that. (hmm, guess this isn’t really me staying out of it, is it?)

Not just saying this to be diplomatic, but, for the most part I think I’m going to side with Bobby and a few others and be conservative on the freudian/psychoanalysis style of viewing. I think there is some layering to Hitch’s films, there for the exploration, but I don’t feel deprived in missing some of them (even the legitimate ones). I just don’t get it on that level quite yet (I still plan to check out some of the suggested reading, however) and, frankly, I’m fine with it for the most part. i don’t know if I want to get all the references.

While watching Marnie, her mother knocks over a bowl of pecans and I actually said to myself, “oh, she knocked over a bowl of nuts, what does that mean? What does that mean?!” I decided I needed to chill out with the analytical viewing. I also watched The Paradine Case and, although I wasn’t enthralled as usual with the level of suspense, I was digging the camera work, composition, framing, all the technical aspects. There were a couple of straightforward sexual references like the judge being a perv and the valet perhaps being gay (not necessarily freudian), but I’m sure I missed a lot of the subtler references—and I’m more than okay with that. I can rest assured that the material is rich (to what extent I think may vary depending on the viewer) for mining no matter what frame of mind I choose to watch a particular Hitch film in (unless it’s explicitly the subject of the story, as with Marnie ).

You guys have definitely given me plenty of food for thought. I only have a handful of favorite directors (who I enjoy most of their work and find them pretty much consistent), but Hitchcock is fast on the way of joining them.

Speaking of The Paradine Case , I’ve heard that Hitchcock had a thing for blondes, but he sure knew how to pick the brunettes too. :-)