Journal of Popular Film & Television (2007) - The Painted Jester: Notes on the Visual Arts in Hitchcock's Films
Details
- article: The Painted Jester: Notes on the Visual Arts in Hitchcock's Films (journal article)
- author(s): Marc Strauss
- journal: Journal of Popular Film & Television (2007)
- issue: volume 35, issue 2, pages 52-56
- DOI: 10.3200/JPFT.35.2.52-57
- journal ISSN: 0195-6051
- publisher: Heldref Publications
- keywords: "Hitchcock" - by François Truffaut, "The Art of Alfred Hitchcock" - by Donald Spoto, "The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track" - by Elisabeth Weis, "The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock" - by Raymond Durgnat, Abstracts, Alfred Hitchcock, American cinema, Anny Ondra, Architecture, Artistic Representation (Imitation), Artists studios, Artworks, Blackmail (1929), British cinema, Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, Cyril Ritchard, Donald Spoto, Easy Virtue (1928), Elisabeth Weis, Ethical issues, Famous Players-Lasky, Feature films, Film (International), Film criticism, Film directors, Film-Productions, François Truffaut, Gainsborough Pictures, Gaze theory, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, I Confess (1953), Identity, Ingrid Bergman, Interpretations, Jack Sullivan, John Forsythe, Marc Strauss, Maurice Yacowar, Michael Chekhov, Michelangelo, Montgomery Clift, Motion picture directors & producers, Murders & murder attempts, New York City, New York, North by Northwest (1959), Paul Newman, Performing Arts and Other Disciplines, Raymond Durgnat, Robin Wood, Roger O. Thornhill, Romantic dramas, Salvador Dali, Salvador Dalí, Shirley MacLaine, Spellbound (1945), Surrealism, The Paradine Case (1947), The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Wrong Man (1956), Topaz (1969), Torn Curtain (1966), Universal Studios, Visual artists, Warner Brothers, William Cameron Menzies, Wolfgang Kieling, Édouard Manet
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Abstract
The overt and subtle references to art and artistry in Alfred Hitchcock's films embody further evidence, if any more needs to be added to the already superabundant body, of the versatile genius of cinema's Master of Suspense. Artworks with plot import that appear in Blackmail (1929), Spellbound (1946), The Paradine Case (1947), I Confess (1952), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Topaz (1969), and other famous and often unheralded Hitchcock movies reveal a sensitivity to the visual arts that richly complement the director's signature concerns for mistaken identity, ambiguous morality, romantic drama, and objects-as-subjects. References to Michelangelo's The Pieta in Topaz, Dalí's surrealism in Spellbound, abstract expressionism in The Trouble with Harry, and the female gaze of Manet's Olympia in Blackmail make analysis of the impact of art and artistry in Hitchcock's films welcome fodder for novices and aficionados alike.
Article
Images of the naked model Victorine Meurent, brazenly confronting with an unabashed glare her Parisian audiences in Edouard Manet's (1832- 83) two oil paintings, Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur L'Herbe (both from 1863)-based in large part on works by the great Italian Renaissance artists Giorgione (The Tempest, ca. 1505), Titian (Bacchanal, ca. 1518), and Raphael (particularly The Judgment of Paris, ca. 1520)-certainly foreshadow and may even have influenced Hitchcock in his use of the painted jester in Blackmail (1929). The "accusatory stare" and pointing finger of the portrait, which is in the studio of the artist Crewe (Cyril Ritchard), disturbs and taunts the guilt-ridden protagonists Frank and Alice and literally causes Alice to stab the canvas.
Intended to provoke an uncomfortable self-consciousness in their respective viewers, both Hitchcock's jester and Victorine's accusatory glare pierce the "fourth wall" in much the same way that a mural of gauntly reproving saints looms over young Larita Gray when she comes to dine with her fiancé's family in Easy Virtue (1927), and when Mrs. Paradine's painted eyes in The Paradine Case (1947) seem to follow Gregory Peck's barrister Tony Keane as he stealthily roams about his client's bedroom.
It comes as no surprise that allusions to the visual arts abound in Hitchcock's films. While scholarly attention has recently been given to his use of music (see Sullivan and Weis), investigations of his deployment of ...
