Previously: How to tell if you are in a Haruki Murakami novel.
1. You are on a train, but no one can find you. You are leaning out of your car window making cryptic statements about love to a man you have only just met. Your silhouette is impossible.
2. You are doing something you do not want to, for reasons you cannot explain, with someone you are obsessed with for no earthly reason.
3. The waistband of your trousers graze your nipples whenever you sit down, stunned, on a luxurious hotel bed, which is often.
4. You are a man. You are a man in a suit. You are a man in a suit and you are 4,000 years old. You are an old leather shoe that was once a human man and you are wearing a brown fedora over a grey toupee. The toupee is sleek, like an otter. Your suit will never get dirty. Your girlfriend is twenty-two years old. You hate her.
5. You know government secrets, and are particularly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, despite having never fought anyone before.
6. You have committed a murder for reasons you cannot explain.
7. You are a psychiatrist whose only job is to periodically deliver lengthy monologues about the motives of not-yet-convicted criminals who are not your patients.
8. Someone you do not know wishes you dead. Someone you do know refuses to help you.
9. You are arguing with a man in a redwood forest. One of you has committed a murder. You cannot remember which.
10. You have been trapped inside of a slow tracking shot for seven hours. You cannot move.
11. You are sleeping with a man you cannot trust. He is the oldest man in the world, and frequently quite rude to you. You have nothing in common; you wear diamonds to breakfast.
12. You are not afraid of a man with a gun; you are terrified of stairs.
13. You are an icy blonde. You are a cool, collected, deliciously young icy blonde. You are a baby iceberg wearing a yellow wig and distinctive sunglasses.
14. You are a mousy blonde. You are desperately in love with the 4,000-year-old man, who only occasionally remembers that you are alive.
15. You are kissing a recent acquaintance by the sea; you do not know how you got there. You tell them a lie for every kiss.
16. Your eyebrows either never move, or cannot stop moving.
17. You think that you have the jewels, but you do not. The man you stole them from never had the real ones to begin with, or else only let you steal a decoy. The man is on a boat. You are on a roof. You are in love. You are both wearing black, and the wind is ruffling your hair.
18. You are spying on someone right now.
19. You are walking down a hallway. You do not want to be walking down a hallway, but you have no choice in the matter.
20. You are a likable sociopath and you are eating dinner, and being deeply charming while doing so. Your dinner companion suspects you of murder.
Tags: alfred hitchcock, movies, north by northwest, psycho, quizzes, the birds, vertigo
MALLORY. Everything about this, but especially: “You have nothing in common; you wear diamonds to breakfast.” I can never turn off a Hitchcock movie because oh God, the pathology of it all. I spend the whole time wondering if the original audience was creeped out too and just too polite to bring up certain, uh, Problems with the Narrative. Also, the eyebrows. I used to look at a lot of things during Vertigo: San Francisco! Creepy Jimmy Stewart! Beautiful redwoods! And now all I can see is Kim Novak’s eyebrows. They mesmerize me.
The transformations of Kim Novak’s eyebrows in Vertigo are basically an entire PHD thesis on economic/social class and aesthetics in mid-20th century America
GUYS WHY DOES SHE LOOK LIKE KIM CATTRALL THO
This query made me aware of Kim’s Vulcan past, so I will be unable to contribute further.
“Your silhouette is impossible”
omg.
Thank you for this. Sometimes I think of the recent Sight & Sound magazine best film ever poll and how Vertigo is now top of the poll. This list helps with my feelings about that.
“Your girlfriend is twenty-two years old. You hate her”
This particularly reminds me of From Russia With Love (not Hitchcock I know I know but oh my god Bond, like, actively kind of hates the hot Russian lady who just wants to bang him that always puzzled me)
The romantic elements of earlier Bond films present rape culture in a nutshell. Bond’s “seduction” of Pussy Galore is a good example, but hardly the only one. It’s a predictable series of escalation: his teasing banter, her flat rejection, his forceful grasp, her struggle to free herself (often a physical struggle with Bond, not an emotional struggle with her own desires), his powerful conquest, her pleasure and gratitude. It speaks volumes about the social structure within which it’s created, and about the expected audience.
A lot of these double as “How To Tell You Are In A Patricia Highsmith Novel,” which makes since because Hitchcock directed the movie version of “Strangers on a Train,” but also and especially: “You are a likable sociopath and you are eating dinner, and being deeply charming while doing so. Your dinner companion suspects you of murder.”
This is, um, relevant to my interests, by which of course I mean I’m currently analyzing how Dial M for Murder reduces Margot Wendice to an object handled and handed around by men, much like her latchkey. I’m surprised they don’t tuck her under the staircase carpet at some point.
I adore that movie, but you are 100% right.
I just saw this for the first time about a month ago and loved it but the whole time I wanted to scream WHY DONT YOU JUST LISTEN TO HER YOU STUPID MEN OH MY GOD.
My favorite example of this? [SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY] After he returns home and calls the police, Tony sends Margot to bed. She protests, saying the police will want to speak with her. He says that’s they’ll have to wait ’til morning. I say “Wait, what?”
She’s stabbed an intruder to death with a pair of scissors; I don’t think the detective is going to say “Oh, poor darling, she should get some rest before we disturb her with our pesky questions.”
I think also the 4,000 year old men are often architects, because that is a *~cool~* mid-century career that no one actually understands, and apparently it leaves lots of time to solve mysteries.
Architect is a common fictional-everyman occupation for exactly those reasons, I think, and also because it is popularly perceived as an intersection of art and science, of conventional establishment (all that technical drawing!) and unleashed power (CREATING WHOLE BUILDINGS!), of glamour and labor.
It implies education and self-direction and a certain level of income without requiring the author/filmmaker to show us anything but a drawing board and a blueprint, and we in the audience are presumed not to reeeeeeeally know how much hands-on or on-site time it requires.
The fictional-female equivalent: gallery owner.
(I’m almost sure I read an article in The A.V. Club or Slant or somewhere sketching out this idea, but a cursory search didn’t turn up anything. If anyone stumbles across it, let me know!)
Spot on. Also, GALLERY OWNERS. Of course. So posh.
But neither as posh as (the Hollywood notion of) a successful artist nor as paint-spattered as struggling artist. It’s the intersection, the gateway between the artist and the rest of the world. In film, gallery owner is a job that wears borrowed glamour but also a hint of money.
I wish *my* career left lots of time to solve mysteries. Sigh.
All the male actors in Hitchcock movies are just fancy suit fillings IMO.
By the way here is the image from the Wikipedia page on vertigo (the disorder):
Having had vertigo for a while this year, I can confirm that this is what it does to your ability to look at things. So much so that in order to diagnose it, they induce the vertigo to happen and then look at your eye to see if it’s doing this.
Good times!
You are a woman who has either been slapped or given an injection by your husband to “calm you down” because he just can’t deal with all your perfectly normal feelings to the craziness that is happening right now.
Architect is a common fictional-everyman occupation for exactly those reasons, I think, and also because it is popularly perceived as an intersection of art and science, of conventional establishment (all that technical drawing!) and unleashed power (CREATING WHOLE BUILDINGS!), of glamour and labor.
It implies education and self-direction and a certain level of income without requiring the author/filmmaker to show us anything but a drawing board and a blueprint, and we in the audience are presumed not to reeeeeeeally know how much hands-on or on-site time it requires.
The fictional-female equivalent: gallery owner.
(I'm almost sure I read an article in The A.V. Club or Slant or somewhere sketching out this idea, but a cursory search didn't turn up anything. If anyone stumbles across it, let me know!)
Spot on. Also, GALLERY OWNERS. Of course. So posh.
My favorite example of this? [SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY] After he returns home and calls the police, Tony sends Margot to bed. She protests, saying the police will want to speak with her. He says that's they'll have to wait 'til morning. I say "Wait, what?"
She's stabbed an intruder to death with a pair of scissors; I don't think the detective is going to say "Oh, poor darling, she should get some rest before we disturb her with our pesky questions."
But neither as posh as (the Hollywood notion of) a successful artist nor as paint-spattered as struggling artist. It's the intersection, the gateway between the artist and the rest of the world. In film, gallery owner is a job that wears borrowed glamour but also a hint of money.
I wish *my* career left lots of time to solve mysteries. Sigh.
I love North by Northwest (just last night I was trying to find academic articles about it, to little avail–if you know of any, hit me up!) and I refuse to apologize for it! Guys, stop making me apologize for it!
…Please let this not be last time North by Northwest is used as a tag.
I love North by Northwest and no amount of revisionary/feminist/anti-racist criticism can change my mind (looks around, wild-eyed for revisionary film scholars).
That being said, if anyone knows of any books or articles about NxNW, let me know, I want to read all the things written about it.
Please let this not be the last time NxNW is used as a tag.
This reminds me of the time my family went to visit my dad in Virginia and spent the entire week doing nothing but watching Hitchcock movies and eating turnovers from the bodega down the street. That was a great vacation.
We ally remember there pass Good time always. I too have such vacation which I really enjoy that time.
Hello from Israel.
I always enjoy reading the articles on your site.
Thanks a lot. http://otm.co.il/