Or, “Close Reading for Fun and Profit.”
Alfred Hitchcock was a member of a very exclusive club, that of directors who did nothing by accident. (The only other members I can think of–limiting the pool to the English-speaking world since I just don’t know enuff about them other folks–are Stanley Kubrick and perhaps the Coen Brothers, but mainly Kubrick.) This means that even the most insanely close reading of a given aspect of one of his films will produce richly rewarding insights into the meaning of the film.
I made two forays into close-reading of Hitch during my bright college years, and here they are:
The first, which I’ve linked to before, is an analysis of the use of sound in The Birds, ranging from the electronic bird-noise “score” to run-of-the-mill sound effects to dialogue and lack thereof. After rereading it myself, all I could think was, “Man, that guy could make a goddamn movie.”
The second is just an outline for an oral presentation I gave, but I think it still makes for an interesting talking-points memo. It’s an examination of design in Vertigo, centering on the central tropes of spirals/circles and towers/verticals. The amount of thought that went into this stuff was just staggering. Look and see.