(Hitchcock knew of course that Grace actually behaved like the loose-living Magdalene, not the virginal Mary.)įor Michael Wood, the films disseminate an unease that is psychological rather than theological. Vertigo ends with the apparition of a sepulchral nun, and Hitchcock’s kinky fussing over Grace Kelly’s costumes in To Catch a Thief prompts Ackroyd to suggest he adorned her “as a hierophant might dress a Madonna”. He was born a Catholic and Ackroyd emphasises the atmosphere of “spiritual mystery” that creepily pervades his films. His fears were harder to bear because his supposed faith should have relieved him of them. Hitchcock often hurled teacups away after draining them: the breakage demonstrated the fragility of our world. Peter Ackroyd sees him as a case for Freudian treatment, who assumed that his neuroses were universal. The newest books on Hitchcock answer the questions in different ways. Those who write about him have an anthropological conundrum to puzzle over: why are these irrational alarms so inescapable and why do we so enjoy being tormented when we watch The Birds, Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, Psycho and the rest? His films exploited our abiding terrors – beaked raptors assaulting us from the skies, a loose stair opening an abyss beneath our feet, nourishment concealing death in a glass of bedtime milk – and added a new one when he made the shower a last redoubt of quaking vulnerability. Hitchcock, described by a colleague as “a know-it-all SOB”, was the man who knew too much about us.
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