Early Hitchcock

Subjective Misinterpretation

The sex and violence expressed in the two films are muted by the conventions of cinematic standards of the time, but they are still expressed comparatively blatantly. Sex in 1930’s cinema, especially British cinema, was taboo, as was violence to a lesser extent. But what Hitchcock is unable to show he delights in implying.

Returning to Blackmail, and the notion of Alice’s fatal sexuality, how much of the text is it possible to misinterpret by contemporary standards? A curtain hides the act of what we assume is attempted rape and murder. Similarly we don’t actually witness the murder in Sabotage but in that case we are in no doubt about what is happening. We, the audience, aren’t given much information about what happens behind the curtain, but we read it as an act of self-defence. This is reminiscent of the ‘rape’ in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles whereby we are judging the characters’ actions as a progression of what we have already been told about them. Of course it would have been unacceptable to show a rape scene in a 1929 film, but a film with even the suggestion of rape would have been unlikely to pass the 1930’s censors.

We cannot be sure if 1930’s audiences interpreted this as rape. The cautious handling of sex in cinema of the period was open to misinterpretation, a classic example being Brief Encounter (David Lean 1945) where the lover’s sexual reticence was misinterpreted as homosexuality by French audiences.

We are also lead to make assumptions as to Alice’s purity. She wasn’t yet married to Frank so could we safely assume that she is a virgin. We only have our interpretations of the two characters by which to judge. After the murder Alice sees a neon sign advertising ‘White Purity’ gin, can we assume that it is her purity she has been defending? We also make assumptions about the sexuality of Sylvia in Sabotage, although we know little of her relationship with Verloc we assume it isn’t very passionate and that her blossoming relationship with Ted indicates a ‘happy’ ending. Are our assumptions correct? We don’t really have enough evidence to speculate a link between Verloc’s repressed desire and his acts of terrorism.