Products of modernity permeate every Alfred Hitchcock film, often as crucial plot devices and important props. Newspapers, for example, are recurring mass-produced items that often extend an undesired reputation’s ability to follow a fugitive character. This, for instance, is the case for both Johnnie Aysgarth’s reckless ways in Suspicion (1941), and Uncle Charlie’s potentially murderous identity in Shadow of a Doubt (1943). The unreliability of these texts destabilizes their claims to objective truth. In both these films and in Blackmail (1929) mass-produced detective fiction, of the sort so many Hitchcock films borrow from, are alluded to in crucial scenes. This self-referentiality, when considered alongside Hitchcock’s equally self-aware cameos in these films, suggests the director’s impression of, and suggestions to, his viewing audience. His manipulations of our readings, his anticipation of the plots we write into his narratives, testify to an attitude of exchange with active viewers. By destabilizing objective truth, Hitchcock suggests a multiplicity of readings and spectator positions.
Newspapers, their reading and their manipulation, become crucial to our understanding of certain characters in all three of these films. The opening silent sequence in Blackmail leads two police officers, one of whom is Frank Webber, to an apartment where a man reclining in bed reads a newspaper. While it is unclear what the man has done, they arrest him on the spot. Robin Wood provides a useful suggestion, based “on the clear evidence the film does offer—that his real crime is to be working-class and perhaps socialist (he is introduced reading the Daily Herald, the newspaper associated with the British Labour Party)” (255). Frank fails to acknowledge the variety of potential reading practices in this scene, assuming that the man is consuming the Daily Herald passively, acquiescing to the opinions it expresses. The assumption is that you are what you read. This failure in interpretation is symptomatic of Frank’s reading in Blackmail, which acknowledges the potential for only one point of view. Hitchcock’s distrust of the police, as it is articulated in so many of his films, often stems from their similar inability to read narratives in more than one way.
This anonymous culprit, apparently incriminated by his choice of newspaper, is introduced in a succession of shots that anticipate the opening of Shadow of a Doubt. A series of dissolves eventually brings us into a similar apartment, this time in Philadelphia rather than London, where Uncle Charlie reclines in a similar position. Unlike the man in the opening of Blackmail, he is not reading a newspaper. Later, however, a newspaper reveals his guilt to his niece. After usurping Joe’s position as the head of the household, Uncle Charlie manipulates the daily newspaper into a flimsy house in order to remove the article which suggests his culpability. The family’s two most avid readers, Joe and Ann, are “more-or-less caricatured individuals, each of whom inhabits a private, separate dream world” (Wood 221). Thus, they quickly forget the missing newspaper pages. It is young Charlie, arguably reading Uncle Charlie’s mind through their implied telepathic connection, who discovers the incriminating article. Her reading of the newspaper at the library, and of the inscription on her new ring, allows her to write the murder narrative that fits and is eventually confirmed. In Shadow of a Doubt, our reading of the newspaper is aligned with young Charlie’s and eventually confirmed, though the inhabitants of Santa Rosa are too caught up in their dream world to acknowledge it.
In Suspicion newspapers, the authoritative bearers of truth, prove to be ambiguous. They initially imply the notoriety of Johnnie Aysgarth, and later suggest his culpability. While the extravagant lifestyle depicted in the society section raises our suspicions regarding Johnnie’s marriage to Lina, this also contributes to her romanticizing of him. Later however, the newspaper brought to the Aysgarth home by the two detectives seems to confirm Lina’s reading of Johnnie as a murderer. Lina’s (and the viewer’s) inscription of Johnnie into the murder narrative proves to be mistaken. Johnnie has no control over the reception of this newspaper, whereas Uncle Charlie does in Shadow of a Doubt. However a similar act of concealment increases Lina and our suspicion of Johnnie, namely his pocketing of the insurance company letter. When finally read, its hiding compounds what seems like the incriminating evidence it holds, and the murder narrative Lina has written for Johnnie fits perfectly. Perhaps a large part of viewer dissatisfaction with Suspicion, though this also makes it more ripe for analysis, is the way our reading is disproved so blatantly. The plot we produce from our consumption of the film is completely disavowed, most notably by our counterpart in the text, Lina.
The contrast between production and consumption, between active and passive reading, is illustrated more plainly in Shadow of a Doubt by the characters of Ann and Joe Newton, and Herb Hawkins. Andreas Huyssen provides a relevant insight to this debate by pinpointing “the notion which gained ground during the 19th century that mass culture is somehow associated with women while real, authentic culture remains the prerogative of men” (47). In this sense, Joe and Herb are presented as emasculated characters too absorbed in their murder plots to notice the criminal in their midst. One critic rightly observes “a hint of the father’s inadequacy, sexual and otherwise” (McLaughlin 144), while Herb’s consistent association with his mother insinuates a similar childishness and castration. Ann, meanwhile, represents a less critical and involved kind of reader. Robin Wood writes of the Newton family that “[e]ach is locked in a separate fantasy world: […] Ann in books read, apparently, less for pleasure than as a means of amassing knowledge with which she has little emotional contact (though she also believes everything she reads is ‘true’)” (300). These readers in Shadow of a Doubt illustrate two dangerous extremes of consumption. Ann’s devotion to books is humourless, blind and virtually religious, as she says to Uncle Charlie over dinner: “I’m too old for funnies, I read two books a week, I took a sacred oath I would.” Joe and Herb, meanwhile, are too involved in the “Unsolved Crimes” books they read, failing to acknowledge the very immediate unsolved crimes of Uncle Charlie. In Shadow of a Doubt then, Hitchcock seems to be playing on a similar notion to that which Huyssen’s criticises, namely “the persistent gendering of mass culture as feminine and inferior” (55). That valorization of “low culture” has the coincidental effect of valorizing Hitchcock’s own project.
A more productive, but also dangerous kind of reading is present in Suspicion in the characters of Lina and Johnnie, whose consumption of other texts eventually allows them to produce their own. Lina’s reading is initially restricted to newspapers, magazines and non-fiction books. When we first meet her, she reads a book entitled Child Psychology in the train car Johnnie stumbles into. The suggestion in this instance is that she is what she reads; like Frank in Blackmail, she consumes texts that confirm rather than challenge her identity. The “mannish” outfit she wears in this scene confirms that childishness, which is qualified later by her mother’s comment that “she is rather spinsterish.” Johnnie’s identity is also shaped by the books he reads, particularly those of the writer-in-the-text, Isobel Sedbusk. As Lina puts it to her: “I don’t believe there’s one of your stories he [Johnnie] hasn’t read.” Notwithstanding the unbelievable ending, but rather assuming a false explanation along the lines of Maxim de Winter’s in Rebecca (1940), Johnnie turns into one of the killers he obsessively reads about in Isobel’s novels. Lina’s commitment to non-fiction here becomes crucial, resulting in her inability to read through the ludicrous explanations Johnnie gives her.
By showing readers who become writers, Suspicion advocates a more engaged relationship to texts. Isobel writes the stories that inspire Johnnie’s manipulation of Lina, but she also points out that “he’s worming all my secrets out of me, I suspect him of writing a detective story on the side.” Johnnie’s reading does indeed turn into writing; he creates a murder plot in his life based on those in Isobel’s novels. Lina, gaining interest in this brand of fiction, also becomes a writer. Enthralled by Isobel’s latest novel and their discussion of it, Lina begins to suspect that Johnnie has murdered his friend Beaky Thwaite. A few scenes earlier, her newfound interest in fiction finds her writing at “the moment of crystallization of the suspicions. The couple are playing a word game with the husband’s best friend; as the two men talk, the woman’s hands finger the letters on the table absently arranging them, suddenly they have formed the word ‘murder’” (Wood 71). When she reads the text Johnnie has provided, that he and Beaky must go survey a piece of land although they have already decided not to buy it, she interprets it to be a pretext for murder. Thus, having become a more well-read consumer, Lina is able to produce a constructive and accurate meaning from Johnnie’s fictional plot. This is a more successful writing exercise than Lina’s earlier attempt, in which she tears up a letter to Johnnie that begins “I’m leaving you.” This letter is crucial however, given the production history of the film, and Hitchcock’s cameo.
Hitchcock claims that he’s “not too pleased with the way Suspicion ends” (Truffaut 142), though documents regarding the script’s history suggest otherwise. The director explains that in the ending he originally envisioned, Lina dies after drinking the poisoned glass of milk. Before her untimely death, however, Lina writes a letter to her mother and asks Johnnie to post it. The letter reads “Dear Mother, I’m desperately in love with him, but I don’t want to live because he’s a killer. Though I’d rather die I think society should be protected from him” (142). The last shot of the film would have shown “Cary Grant, whistling cheerfully, walks over to the mailbox and pops the letter in” (142). It is worth noting here that the novel Suspicion is based upon, Before the Fact (1932) by Frances Iles, has an unhappy ending (Worland 5). However, “[t]he first complete screenplay for Before the Fact, dated December 28, 1940, and written by Hitchcock’s regular collaborators, his wife, Alma Reville, and assistant Joan Harrison, ends with the husband’s innocence affirmed and the couple reconciled” (7). Therefore, to what extent the ending was actually forced upon Hitchcock is very unclear. The detail of Johnnie sending Lina’s letter in this “original ending” is nonetheless relevant. This is not only what Lina fails to do with her “I’m leaving you” letter, but it is also what we see Hitchcock doing in his cameo. The second time Lina leaves the town bookstore with a stack of Isobel’s novels, Hitchcock is standing on the sidewalk putting a letter into the mailbox. In a sense then, because he is denied the ending he wanted Hitchcock takes matters into his own hands, sending the letter that identifies Johnnie as the murderer himself. This cameo proves Hitchcock, like Lina and to a lesser extent Johnnie, to be both a reader of fiction (he has clearly read Before the Fact), and a creator of fiction, in this case Suspicion.
Alternate endings and authorial interventions aside, both Lina and Hitchcock’s readings of Johnnie prove to be false. Most viewers, however, believe in Johnnie’s guilt until the last scene, hence the widely-held dissatisfaction with the ending. The conclusion mobilized by the script has Johnnie redeemed and, more significantly, Lina framing herself as the culprit. In the final scene, on a dizzying drive in a convertible sports car along a winding road on a steep hill, Lina’s fears are exacerbated only to be proved false. As she breaks down in fear Johnnie demands, rather suspiciously, “how much do you think a man can bear?” This, along with the suggestion that he was going to kill himself (not her) with the poison he’d heard of through Isobel, coaxes Lina into rewriting our understanding of the film. Throughout the film we identify with her as the tormented and suffering victim, but it is her plot that turns out to be the fictional one. If we take the conclusion to be true it is Lina, not Johnnie, who has, in Isobel’s words, been “writing a detective story on the side.” Furthermore it is we, those viewers who identify with Lina rather than Johnnie, who are re-written as gullible readers by the conclusion.
Another important cameo comes in Blackmail, with Hitchcock portraying himself as both reader and creator of fiction, while “Alice and Frank are clearly identified as ‘viewers’” (Poague 87). Hitchcock appears in a streetcar early in the film, “facing us directly, and as one of us, as a reader” (87), suggesting that one ought to both consume and produce texts. Frank meanwhile is an indiscriminate consumer, invested in Fingerprints, “the detective film he looks forward to seeing. He may be confident the filmmakers will get the details wrong, but Frank takes an obviously personal interest in the film nevertheless, as if it were a genuine token of himself” (86). This likens Frank, in many ways, to Joe and Herb in Shadow of a Doubt, whose complete immersion in the world of the texts they consume hinders their ability to act in reality. Frank, like the detective movies he goes to see, gets “all the details [of Alice’s case] wrong.” Frank’s narrow interpretation of detective films, like his earlier assumptions regarding the Daily Herald reader, shows a singular and unwavering approach to texts. Hitchcock’s cameo as fellow reader, on the other hand, provides us with another critical point of view. He disavows directorial authority and opens his texts (and himself) to new kinds of spectatorial interpretation.
By including readers and writers in his films, Hitchcock provides us with surrogates in the text. Taking up their positions, assuming their subjectivity, we gain new and different points of entry into a given text. Furthermore, by critiquing the reading practices of characters within Hitchcock’s films, we are better able to inform and qualify our own readings. The way newspapers, non-fiction books and detective fiction are manipulated in Blackmail, Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt, suggest ways in which to approach these films as factual, ambiguous or crime fiction, but also the dangers involved in interpretation. Close-minded characters such as Joe and Herb in Shadow or Frank in Blackmail, serve as warnings against claims to a “once-and-for-all meaning” (Poague 88). What Hitchcock advocates by sometimes disproving and sometimes endorsing the readings of his characters, is a constant multiplicity of interpretations.
Note: Written for English 393: Hitchcock course taught by Prof. Ned Schantz at McGill University in the Fall of 2006.
Works Cited
Blackmail. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Anna Ondra (Alice White), Joan Berry (Alice’s voice), John Longden (Frank Webber), Cyril Richard (Crewe), Donald Calthrop (Tracy). British International, 1929.
Huyssen, Andreas. “Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other.” After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1986. 44-62.
McLaughlin, James. “All in the Family: Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.” A Hitchcock Reader. Eds. Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague. Ames, IA: Iowa State UP, 1986. 141-152.
Poague, Leland. “Criticism and/as History: Rereading Blackmail.” A Hitchcock Reader. Eds. Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague. Ames, IA: Iowa State UP, 1986. 78-89.
Shadow of a Doubt. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Joseph Cotton (Charles Oakley), Teresa Wright (Charlie Newton), Patricia Collinge (Emma Newton), Henry Travers (Joe Newton), Hume Cronyn (Herb Hawkins). Universal, 1943.
Suspicion. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Joan Fontain (Lina McLaidlaw/Aysgarth), Cary Grant (Johnnie Aysgarth),
Truffault, François. Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.
Wood, Robin. Hitchcock’s Films Revisited. Revised ed. New York: Columbia UP, 2002.
Worland, Rick. “Before and after the Fact: Writing and Reading Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion.’” Cinema Journal 41.4 (Summer 2002): 3-26.
Five years before leaving for Hollywood, Hitchcock had perfected the suspense-romance genre formula that had become his calling card in the British film industry. The 39 Steps – moreso than the fun but less thoughtful The Lady Vanishes (1939) and the comparatively clumsy Secret Agent (1936) – doesn’t just skip between its crime and romance registers, it substitutes them for one another just long enough for accidental spy Hannay (Robert Donnat) and his handcuff-bound would-be wife Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) to get out of a dangerous situation and into another.