analysis - Was Alfred Hitchcock a feminist? - Movies & TV

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Many of Alfred Hitchcock's
films contain a strong female lead. From Grace Kelly's Lisa in Rear
Window to Ingrid Bergman's Alicia Huberman in Notorious,
these actresses were characteristically assertive, intelligent and rarely allowed
themselves to be sublimated by men.

The term
feminist may be ambiguous, so I'll define a feminist for this
situation as: a person who believes that women should enjoy the same benefits
as men through equality in the political, social and economic
spheres.

Consider Alma Hitchcock, his
wife. She was by his side for many of his films, and was considered an asset in the
editing room. Per the href="http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/Alma_Reville">Hitchcock Wiki, Alma
"...noticed Janet Leigh inadvertently swallowed after her character's fatal encounter
with Norman Bates' "mother" in "Psycho" (1960), necessitating an alteration to the
negative."

Or even Edith Head, Hitchcock's href="http://www.whitebowlproductions.com/2012/02/wihm-day-25edith-head-and-alfred-hitchcock/">favorite
href="http://lancelonie.hubpages.com/hub/The-Incredibles-Edna-Mode-is-Hollywood-costume-designer-Edith-Head">costume
designer, who won eight Academy Awards-- more than any
other woman.

By including such
characters (or such actresses) in his films, and surrounding himself with smart and
successful women, was Alfred Hitchcock (either consciously or unconsciously) expressing
a personal desire to see equal treatment for women?

Answer

You ask a complicated question!
There are arguments for Hitchcock as feminist, but the bulk of the literature I have
seen is more inclined to label him as a href="http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/Literature_Film_Quarterly_%282000%29_-_Fashion_dreams%3a_Hitchcock,_women,_and_Lisa_Fremont">misogynist
(not to mention fetishist, sadist and voyeur). The icy blondes that were his trademark
may have been strong characters on film, but in life were very much under his control.
He not only dressed Vera Miles for his film The Wrong Man, but
dressed her for general wear as well. Joan Fontaine called him a Svengali for the way he
controlled her during the making of Rebecca. Tippi Hedren was
picked out of a television commercial not for her acting ability but for her look. She
was allowed to be brutally attacked by birds in the filming of the movie The
Birds. During the filming of Marnie, rather than give
her direction, Hitchcock would pose her, href="http://hitchcockandme.wordpress.com/tag/tippi-hedren/">even arranging her
expression with his fingers, then roll film. When she rebuffed his advances
and his need for control, he threatened to ruin her career and he did – keeping her
under contract for a small sum for several years, after which no other studio would
touch her. ( href="http://thehathorlegacy.com/tippi-hedren-on-alfred-hitchcock/">Interview with
Hedren)

The trouble with labeling
Hitchcock is the incongruencies between the product of his work and the methods employed
to achieve them. In href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ud-8TEqdBaIC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false">The
Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory, author
Tania Modleski argues that Hitchcock was indifferent to feminism and that is the reason
there is so much debate on the issue.

Personal
opinion? He recognized the strength in women, but rather than appreciate their strength,
he used his films and his film-making as a way to obsessively control them. Art history
is full of people whose art and motive seems disparate. Genius in art does not always
come from a place of honor. To judge Hitchcock, or any artist, you have to look at both
work and life.